Reconstructing Nature The Engagement of Science and Religion

This book published in the UK by TandT Clark, expands upon the authors'1995-6 Glasgow Gifford Lectures, a prestigious lecture series. Brooke andCantor examine the many different ways in which the relationship between scienceand religion has historically been presented. They contend that in fact neitherscience nor religion is reducible to some timeless "essence," and criticize thevarious master-narratives that have been put forward in support of such"essentialist" theses. Along the way, Brooke and Cantor repeatedly demolish thecliches of popular histories of the science and religion debate, demonstratingagain and again the impossibility of reducing these debates a single narrative,or the relationship to a paradigm of conflict.