Scientific progress has a way of surreptitiously altering our perception of history. Although the promulgation of some scientific advances is so public and represents a profound shift in our collective world view and how we believe we came to be, other discoveries barely register in our consciousness.

Last week, hidden in media awash with a hundred facets of the terrorism story, several new pieces of scientific advancement testified to the ongoing insight and revision science offers to our history.

A theory and a discovery at loggerheads with one another seek to explain the Black Death that decimated medieval Europe. Two researchers at the University of Liverpool offer their theory that Black Death was not caused by the bacterium of bubonic plague at all, but by a now-dormant virus much like Ebola.

Rather than assuming that flea-infested rats served as a vehicle for Yersinia pestis, the bacterium responsible for bubonic plague, the scientists focus their theory around reports that the disease was transmitted between people.

While Dr. Susan Scott and Dr. Christopher Duncan have been criticized not only by scientists but also by medieval historians for their dismissal of the flea-rat vector for bacteria responsible for the pandemic, their theory represents the science that challenges us to examine our views of history, and possibly even alter them.

The discovery may enable scientists to have such a detailed molecular image of the bacterium that they will be able to develop more effective vaccines for bubonic plague. Finally reckoning with a pandemic that killed approximately 25 million in six years? Or, if the virus theory prevails, will the accomplishments of the Cambridge scientists seem to be diminished?

“The Unity of Knowledge,” a recent book by Pulitzer-Prize-winning evolutionary biologist Edward O. Wilson, grapples with the need to explain our world not merely in the context of one discipline.

Wilson describes physics and religion, chemistry and sociology, art and genetics to all be integral in our understanding of the universe but incomplete in and of themselves. His argument that disciplines such as history and science buttress and complement one another rings true as science continues to offer us new explanations for our history.

Perhaps we can adapt to science that tells us that our historical beliefs about the Black Death epidemic ought to be revised. However, different scientific progress may cause more controversy when the history it reveals interfaces with deeply held religious beliefs.

Archaeologists supported in part by the National Geographic Society used sonar to examine the floor of the Black Sea and believe they have evidence to support a large flood in the region more than 7,000 years ago, roughly during the life of Noah, the ark-builder of Genesis.

Last summer, the scientists discovered an ancient shoreline replete with artifacts from human settlement, all resting undisturbed approximately 500 feet under water.

Do such findings serve as support of a biblically literal history?

Can science, with its sometimes conflicting theories and self-correcting nature, be a basis for describing history or faith? Believing that the Black Sea findings unequivocally validate Noah as a historical figure is to ignore the history of Genesis and its literary roots altogether.

Derived from three ancient sources termed the Yahwist, Elohist, and Priestly sources, the writings of the flood in Genesis were meant not as a historical record or scientific treatise, but as a way to describe the pre-history of humanity as understood by those who followed the covenant of Abraham and the Mosaic teachings.

While some will inevitably see the Black Sea discoveries as scientific support for the Bible and yet reject other science that is unaligned with literal interpretation, others, like Wilson, will recognize the role science and religion both play in shaping our history and happily live with the taut relationship between them.

Even the new controversies surrounding the Black Plague show us that our perception of history changes over time.

Rather than debating whether the Plague was caused by planetary alignment or by earthquakes, as our medieval predecessors did, we are discussing whether it was a bacterium or a virus.

It gives me faith that if science can help us more completely understand our history, there may be hope for reconciliation between science and religion.

Rachel Faber Machacha is a graduate in international development studies from Emmetsburg.