The Cambridge Companion to Science and Religion

In recent years, the relations between science and religion have been the object of renewed attention. Developments in physics, biology and the neurosciences have reinvigorated discussions about the nature of life and ultimate reality. At the same time, the growth of anti-evolutionary and intelligent design movements has led many to the view that science and religion are necessarily in conflict. 

This book provides a comprehensive introduction to the relations between science and religion, with contributions from historians, philosophers, scientists and theologians. It explores the impact of religion on the origins and development of science, religious reactions to Darwinism, and the link between science and secularization. It also offers in-depth discussions of contemporary issues, with perspectives from cosmology, evolutionary biology, psychology, and bioethics. 

The volume is rounded out with philosophical reflections on the connections between atheism and science, the nature of scientific and religious knowledge, and divine action and human freedom.

Science and Religion. Some Historical Perspectives

In this 1991 volume, John Hedley Brooke offers an introduction and critical guide to one of the most fascinating and enduring issues in the development of the modern world: the relationship between scientific thought and religious belief. It is common knowledge that in western societies there have been periods of crisis when new science has threatened established authority. The trial of Galileo in 1633 and the uproar caused by Darwin's Origin of Species (1859) are two of the most famous examples. Taking account of recent scholarship in the history of science, Brooke takes a fresh look at these and similar episodes, showing that science and religion have been mutually relevant in so rich a variety of ways that no simple generalizations are possible. A special feature of the book is that Brooke stands back from general theses affirming 'conflict' or 'harmony', which have so often served partisan interests. His object is to reveal the subtlety, complexity, and diversity of the interaction as it has taken place in the past and in the twentieth century.

The beginning of Science in the Western World

The story of how Greek science and philosophy was eventually translated, developed and transmitted to Europe through the mediation of Arabic culture is well known. The role played by religious beliefs and institutions in the nurturing of the sciences has, however, been the subject of competing master-narratives. Until relatively recently there has been a tendency in Western historiography to diminish the originality of Muslim thinkers, with a consequent emphasis on Christian values and doctrines in the launch of ‘modern science’. By contrast, Muslim scholars, in celebrating the originality of Arabic astronomy, mathematics, optics and medicine, have tended to present Christianity as a cultural force that, if anything, was (and continued to be) opposed to scientific initiatives. The debate is coloured by the fact that apologists for particular religious beliefs like to present their own tradition as having a special relationship with the sciences. This particular trait is sometimes visible in scholarship that has emphasised the role of the Protestant Reformation in creating favourable conditions for the expansion of science. My argument in this paper will be that it is no longer possible to claim that Christianity gave birth to modern science. At the same time, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries both Catholic and Protestant Christianity provided resources for the justification of new, empirical methods of enquiry. While the revival of atomism and the mechanisation of nature generated anxieties for Christian theologians, new ways were found for re-integrating scientific and theological principles that helped to produce an enduring scientific culture in Western Europe.

John Hedley Brooke

John Hedley Brooke

Dr. John Hedley Brooke held the Andreas Idreos Professorship of Science & Religion at Oxford University from 1999 to 2006. He is a Fellow of Harris Manchester College, Oxford and Honorary Professor of the History of Science at Lancaster University. In 2007 he was a Distinguished Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Durham University. His books include Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives (Cambridge University Press, 1991) and (with Geoffrey Cantor) Reconstructing Nature: The Engagement of Science & Religion (T & T Clark, 1998). His most recent book, co-edited with Ronald Numbers, is Science & Religion around the World (Oxford University Press, 2011) He is currently President of the International Society for Science & Religion.