SCIENCE AND RELIGION AND THE MYTH OF THEIR CONFLICT
Peter Harrison (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Science and Religion, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), ISBN – 10: 0521712513, ISBN – 13: 9780521712514, pp. 322.
Sebastian MATEIESCU
The scholarly but also the public interest in the relationship between science and religion has registered a remarkable increase in the last years. The Cambridge Companion to Science and Religion is meant to be a solid introduction to the historical, philosophical and scientific aspects of this connection. The fourteen essays of the book deal with religion as understood in western Christianity and their common aim is to argue against the myth that science and religion are in conflict. The “conflict myth,” mostly advanced in the nineteenth century by the works of John Draper1 and Andrew Dickson White,2 is denounced here as “erroneous.” The first set of arguments for this, corresponding to the first part of the book, draws on the historical evidence for the peaceful coexistence of the two domains. The first essay, penned by David C. Lindberg, focuses on the positive interaction between science and religion in the patristic and medieval period.