Review
"An outstanding volume. . . . The book can certainly be recommended as an appropriate text for undergraduates."—Science & Theology News
(
Science & Theology News )
"The contributors . . . offer the educated public some fascinating twists of plot characteristic of the newer ''complexity'' literature."
(Ryan C. MacPherson
Journal of the History of Biology )
"Lindberg and Numbers, and their team, show how effective concentrating upon science and religion can be for getting scholarly history of science across. They write clearly, for ordinary readers, setting events in context, and supply formidable notes and bibliographies."
(David Knight
Annals of Science )
"The well-written essays in this book cover material from the Middle Ages through the post-Darwinian debates. . . . Most of the essays are clear, and the excellent, annotated bibliography mentions many important readings."
(Margaret J. Osler
Journal of Interdisciplinary History )
"With its concise, clearly written essays . . . including extensive endnotes that refer the reader to primary texts and important scholarly studies, this volume is a superb introduction to some of the most fascinating episodes in the long history of the relationship between science and Christianity."—James A. Wiseman, Catholic Historical Review
(James A. Wiseman
Catholic Historical Review )
“Clarity is a chief feature of all the contributions, each of which . . . has been chosen to illustrate ‘the most notorious, most interesting or most instructive instances’ of the encounter between science and Christianity. Clear and engaging: it is a winning combination. It should find favour with students and see the book listed as an essential text in many course reading lists.”—Peter Broks, Endeavour
(Peter Broks
Endeavour )
“With its illustrations, extended endnotes and annotated guide to further readings, the book reviews old questions in a thoroughly enlightening scholarly and interesting way.”—Carl S. Keener, Christian Century
(Carl S. Keener
Christian Century )
From the Inside Flap
Have science and Christianity been locked in mortal combat for the past 2000 years? Or has their relationship been one of peaceful coexistence, encouragement, and support? Both opinions have been vigorously defended, widely disseminated, and hotly debated. And both have been rejected by knowledgeable historians as unacceptable oversimplifications of the historical reality.
This book steps back from those debates, abandoning, for the present, the attempt to formulate or defend generalizations of such breadth and scope. Its authors believe that every encounter had its own peculiar shape and that each must be examined uniquely before broader attempts at generalization are likely to succeed. This book, in language accessible to the general reader, investigates twelve of the most notorious, most interesting, and most instructive cases, aiming to tell each story in its historical specificity and local particularity.
Among the episodes treated in When Science and Christianity Meet are the Galileo affair, the 17th-century clockwork universe, Noah's ark and flood in the development of natural history, struggles over Darwinian evolution, debates about the origin of the human species, and the Scopes trial. Readers will be introduced to St. Augustine, Roger Bacon, Pope Urban VIII, Isaac Newton, Pierre-Simon de Laplace, Carl Linnaeus, Charles Darwin, T. H. Huxley, Sigmund Freud, and many other participants in the historical drama of science and Christianity.
Contributors:
*William B. Ashworth Jr.
*Thomas H. Broman
*Janet Browne
*Mott T. Greene
*Edward J. Larson
*David C. Lindberg
*David N. Livingstone
*Robert Bruce Mullin
*G. Blair Nelson
*Ronald L. Numbers
*Jon H. Roberts
