User:Firefly322/Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives

Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives (1991) is a book written by John Hedley Brooke. It has received two prestigious awards: the American History of Science Society Watson-Davis Prize (1992) and the John Templeton Foundation Prize for Outstanding Books in Science & Religion (1995). It has been widely reviewed in academic journals--examples, the science journal Nature, the religious journal The Journal of Theological Studies, and the history journal Isis.

Main themes
The book identifies three traditional views of the relationship between science and religion found in historical analyses: conflict, complementarity, and commonality. The book portrays all three as oversimplifications. It offers up the alternative notion of complexity, which bases the realtionship between science and religion on changing circumstances where it is defined upon each particular historical situation and the actual beliefs and ideas of the scientific and religious figures involved.

Contents
It has eight chapters and a postscript section. Chapter one "Interaction between Science and Religion: Some Preliminary Considerations." Chapter two "Science and Religion in the Scientific Revolution." Chapter three "The Paralllel between Scientific and Religious Reform." Chapter four "Divine Activity in a Mechanical Universe." Chapter five "Science and Religion in the Enlightenment." Chapter six "The Fortunes and Functions of Natural Theology." Chapter seven "Visions of the Past: Religious Belief and the Historical Sciences." Chapter eight "Evolutionary Theory and Religious Belief." Postscript "Science and Religion in the Twentieth Century."

Bibliographic essay
The book also has a bibliographic essay (pages 348-403), which according to the American Historical Review "identifies and the text incorporates the results of virtually every significant and relevant article published in the past fifty years."

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