I was bored over my holiday break (December 2002), and thought I would just read a few pages of this book to help me fall asleep. Three hours later, I was riveted to the book and couldn't put it down (or sleep).
Originally written in 1886, this is a comprehensive account of clashes between theological and scientific claims about how nature works. White systematically chronicles the persecution all the major areas of scientific inquiry had to go through from theologans before they were accepted : geology, mechanics, medicine, meteorology, biology, etc..
For example, in one chapter he meticulously works through the emergence of the heliocentric view of the world, as opposed to that endorsed by the Pope where the earth is the center of the universe. There are tragic tales of threats (Galileo), torture, and execution (Bruno) of scientific minds who made claims that conflicted with the Church.
The chapters are exceedingly well-crafted. He starts out each chapter by describing the origins of the Christian view of the topic (for instance, that there is literally a stone firmament above the earth through which rain is let in). He then discusses how scientists came to question such views, their persecution by the church, and eventually how the Church backtracked and hedged and finally accepted the scientific view.
Compared to a lot of work by skeptics these days, the book is very scholarly: it is exceedingly well referenced, so that you can go find the original sources of both the theological and scientific viewpoints. On the other hand, since the book is over 100 years old, there are some ideas that are a bit antiquated. For example, his discussion of "primitive and savage cultures" extant in Africa are a bit dated. Also, the references to the 'recent' Civil War in the United States shows the books age. These anachronisms come off as interesting more than anything else. Overall, stylistically the book reads better and is more thoroughly researched than most modern skeptical thoughts.
Overall, I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to know the real story about how science and religion have related to one another in history. To those creationists who say that scientists are being dogmatic by adhering to naturalism, I say read this book. Naturalism as a scientific methodology is not a dogma (where a 'dogma' is something believed without evidence). Rather, science is naturalistic because 1000 years of the alternative were an abject failure: based on historical evidence, religious thinking *in science* only stunts the creativity and logical thought processes of scientists. In my experience in neuroscience, I have seen this many times.
Finally, this book should be on every scientist's bookshelf. As a working neuroscientist, I take for granted that I am free to think in any direction about how the brain works. I do not need to answer to any higher authority than evidence provided by experiments. I am accorded this privilege because of people like Galileo, Darwin, Lyell, and Harvey who stood up to the Church establishment and had the courage, in the face of sometimes fatal reproach, to say what they thought was true.
