The Cambridge Companion to Science and Religion, Edited by Pete Harrison, xi + 307 pps., Cambridge: CUP, 2010, $24.99; and Science and Religion: New Historical Perspectives, Edited by Thomas Dixon, Geoffrey Cantor, and Stephen Pumfrey, xiv + 317 pps., Cambridge: CUP, 2010, $95.00.
The two titles currently under review are being reviewed together because they share an intellectual heritage with the work of John Hedley Brooke, the renown and pioneering scholar of science and religion studies, as well as some of the same individual contributors. In fact, the first volume, appropriately, contains a chapter written by Brooke, and the second title is explicitly dedicated to him. Peter Harrison, Andreas Idreos Professor of Science and Religion at the University of Oxford, and Director of the Ian Ramsey Centre, University of Oxford, edits the first title, The Cambridge Companion to Science and Religion (hereafter CCSR); the second title, Science and Religion: New Historical Perspectives (hereafter SRNP) is edited by a group of scholars, including Thomas Dixon (Senior Lecturer in History at Queen Mary, University of London), Geoffrey Cantor (Professor Emeritus of the History of Science at the University of Leeds, and Stephen Pumfrey (Senior Lecturer in the Department of History, Lancaster University).
It is acknowledged in both titles that the relations between science and religion have been the object of renewed attention in the last several decades. Ongoing developments in physics and biology have reinvigorated discussions about the nature of ultimate reality; concurrently, the growth of anti-evolutionary movements has led many to the view that science and religion are necessarily in conflict; both titles argue that this is not the case at all.
The first title, CCSR, provides a somewhat comprehensive introduction to the relations between science and religion, with contributions from historians, philosophers, scientists and theologians. Overall, it explores the impact of religion on the origins and development of science, religious reactions to Darwinism, and the putative link between science and secularization. It also includes lucid discussions of contemporary issues, with respect to cosmology, evolutionary biology, 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. Particularly strong within CCSR are the chapters by Jonathon R. Topham, covering natural theology and the sciences; by Simon Conway Morris, covering evolution and the inevitability of intelligent life; and by John Haught, covering the notions of God, science, and comic purpose. Notably, Topham contends that Darwin’s mechanism provided for an open-ended evolutionary process, but that this open-endedness is not necessarily counter religious interpretations. Moreover, Conway Morris, in picturing evolution as a proverbial ‘search engine’, notes that global convergences of disparate lines shows that the common depiction of Darwinism as a random walk, of sorts, is incorrect, and that the outcomes of Darwinian evolution have an uncanny predictability about them. Haught, interestingly, contends that the fundamental properties of the universe are such that give rise to increasing production of beauty and the capacity for aesthetic experience, which gives credence to the reality of an inexhaustible goodness, or what may be called ‘God’.
The second title, SRNP, derives from the proceedings of a 2007 conference at the University of Lancaster to mark the retirement of John Hedley Brooke. Fourteen authors, the majority of which are natural scientists and historians, contribute chapters that are complementary of Brooke’s reputation as the proverbial ‘conflict thesis’ slayer, a reputation that derives from his classic Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives (Cambridge, 1991). SRNP picks up – and extends – Brooke’s original argument and seeks to answer how historians can now impose order on the contingent histories of religious engagements with science. It explores the history and changing meanings of the categories ‘science’ and ‘religion’; the connection between knowledge, power and intellectual imperialism; and the reasons for the confrontation between evolution and creationism among English-speaking Christians. Particularly strong within this title are the chapters by Peter Harrison and Geoffrey Cantor. Harrison’s chapter argues that whereas it is questionable when ‘modern science’ emerged, the question of the continuity or lack thereof between attempts to comprehend nature in earlier periods and the activities of scientists today has profound implications for any research into the history of ‘science’ per se. Cantor’s chapter, fittingly the last one in the book, is the most interesting of the lot; he changes the debate about ‘conflict’ from a negative perception to a positive one: indeed, the presence of ‘conflict’ in the relation of science and religion may be better perceived as, far from undermining religion, necessary for its intellectual development.
In summary, both of these titles are profitable reads for those who have a background (or pronounced interest) in the science and religion dialogue; the first title, CCSR, would be apropos for general introductory courses in philosophy of religion, whereas the second title, SRNP, would be more apropos for advanced-level courses, as it has a more specific orientation on the trajectory on one scholar’s thought.
Bradford McCall
Regent University