Final answer:
Émile Durkheim discussed the distinction between the sacred and the secular in his 1915 work, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, where he explained religion as a system of beliefs regarding sacred things set apart from the ordinary.
Step-by-step explanation:
The scholar who discussed the distinction between the sacred and the secular in his work, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, is French sociologist Émile Durkheim. In his seminal 1915 text, Durkheim defined religion as a 'unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things', referring to the sacred as something extraordinary that evokes wonder and appears connected to the divine. He argued that separation occurs in society between the profane, meaning the aspects of ordinary life, and the sacred, leading to religion manifesting when objects or practices acquire a status that sets them apart as extraordinary or forbidden, such as a rock becoming a headstone (sacred) or being used in landscaping (profane).