The Cambridge Companion to Science and Religion [Paperback]

To quote the editor, Peter Harrison, "The aim of this collection has been to provide some historical perspectives, some general philosophical overviews, and coverage of some of the central topics in contemporary science and religion discourse." It is limited because of size to Western monotheistic religions, primarily Christianity. However, the authors include atheists, agnostics, scientists and professional theologians.

The first five chapters (essays) deal with the interaction of science and religion over five periods of time (roughly AD 100-1500, 1500-1700, 1700-1859, 1859-1920, and 1920-the present) and is pretty standard stuff.

The next five chapters discuss issues in religion and contemporary science. Ronald Numbers' coverage of scientific creationism and intelligent design in Chapter 6 is up-to-date and worldwide in scope. Simon Conway Morris covers the concept of convergence in evolution in chapter 7 (Evolution and the inevitability of intelligent life). Chapter 8 is an up-to-date summary of the current scientific thinking about the Big Bang by William R. Stoeger, SJ. It also briefly covers string theory, the anthropic principle, and the multiverse hypothesis. In chapter 9, Fraser Watts discusses how theology can make positive contributions to psychology and vice versa. Chapter 10 is a frank discussion of the interrelationships of science, bioethics and religion during the period 1960-2009.

The final four chapters cover philosophical perspectives, starting with Michael Ruse's chapter on atheism, naturalism and science, in which he briefly discusses the views of Karl Barth, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Edward O. Wilson, Alvin Plantinga and Daniel Dennett. With regard to "God genes" he suggests that the Pope has them, Richard Dawkins does not, and that the jury is out on whether Anglicans have them or not. In chapter 12, Nancey Murphy discusses the nature of scientific explanation, the rejection of reductionism in favor of downward causation and emergence, and divine action. In chapter 13, John Haught leads up to what he calls the aesthetic cosmological principle, which suggests "that the fundamental properties of the universe are oriented towards the ongoing production of instances of beauty and the intensifying of a capacity in some organisms for aesthetic experience." Chapter 14 is a well-organized and readable summary of ways of relating science and religion by Mikael Stenmark. He starts with Ian Barbour's four models (conflict, independence, dialogue and integration) and goes on to discuss a number of alternative though similar typologies and identifies the proponents of each approach.

The book includes a well-organized seven-page guide for further reading and an index.

I recommend this book for anyone who would like an overview of the history and current state of the interactions between science and religion and already has some familiarity with the subject.

This book is to be highly recommended. All the essays are accessible to nonspecialists and all are informative. It does not replace Lindberg &Numbers' "God and Nature," but should be consulted as an update for some of the essays.

Readers buying books online are very dependent on the description given out by the publishers. The blurb that Cambridge UP have provided suggest that this is a comprehensive introduction to the issues relating to religion and science. Of course, the vast majority of scientists would probably argue that religion has nothing to do with science - at least until a religious group challenges a research programme of theirs! One would certainly expect this view to be represented here and some study of the grounds on which religious groups challenge scientific research, on embryos, for instance. So one would expect some discussion of science and ethics and the degree to which the ethics of religious groups should be given a privileged place in formulating research in science. Then again, one needs to consider religious movements, both Christian and non-Christian, that insist on beliefs which are clearly not supported by science (creationism, for instance). Many religious believers claim that the findings of science do not conflict with their beliefs. This is tricky ground as science is moving so fast that such a view may quickly become dated in individual instances. This does bring us to the heart of the problem. Science has ways of asserting and defending its `truths' which are public and subject to challenge by other scientists. Many hypotheses fail and can be shown clearly to fail, others gather strength from further research and so slowly a greater understanding of the natural world evolves. It is hard to see theology doing anything compatible. What theological truths, accepted by the mainstream theological community, have been achieved over the past fifty years and how do these compare with the achievements of science? How might this reflect the necessarily changing relationship between the two? Is there any scientific evidence for the existence of any kind of force outside the universe as we know it and if not is there any other kind of evidence to support the idea?
I raise these questions as they would seem among those that the blurb promises and anyone with a general philosophical interest in the subject might expect to find covered. Then the book actually arrives. The first surprise is that the essays are almost all on Christianity. This can be justified one the grounds that `religion' covers so many diverse forms of human behaviour and belief that `religion' is too broad a topic, but why is there no mention of this in the blurb? It means too that many perspectives are excluded. There is virtually nothing on the foundations of scientific thinking in the Greek world or Arab science. (Praising Christians for accepting classical learning in the sciences, as David Lindberg does here, implies that there was something special about science in the classical period and it is a pity that its achievements are not covered here. The Greeks showed that one could think scientifically without a religious perspective and so deserve a place in the debate. )
The next problem is that the book largely deals with the issues from a `Christianity is not in conflict with science' angle. This is an issue that deserves space and must be tackled in a comprehensive book of this nature but surely not as exclusively as it is here. The editor, Peter Harrison, sets out the approach of the book in the Introduction. `In so far as there is any general trend [in the historical relations between science and religion], it is that for much of the time religion has facilitated scientific endeavour . . .Thus religious ideas inform and underpin scientific investigation, those pursuing sciences were often motivated by religious impulses, religious institutions frequently turn out to have been the chef sources of support for the scientific enterprise and, in it enterprise science established itself by appealing to religious values'. Could we apply this to the foundations of scientific thinking in the Greek world, Darwinism and particle physics? ( I have recently come across this quotation from Darwin:" It appears to me (whether rightly or wrongly), that direct arguments against Christianity and theism produce hardly any effect on the public, and freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men's minds which follows from the advance of science. It has, therefore, been always my object to avoid writing on religion and I have confined myself to science.' ( Letter to Edward Aveling, 1880))
This does not mean that the essays in support of Harrison's hypothesis are not often interesting. Ronald Numbers provides a workmanlike account of the rise of creationism, Jonathan Topham is stimulating on natural theology and the sciences, as is Jon Roberts on `Religious reactions to Darwin'. I enjoyed John Evans' sociological approach to 'Science, bioethics and religion'. It is useful to have a summary of Simon Conway Morris' thesis that intelligent life may be programmed to emerge even if one has doubts about it. If one wants a theological defence that the universe has a purpose then John Haught provides it - bringing Teilhard de Chardin (read by many of us in the 1960s!) back into the limelight. Yet here is the problem. If, as Haught argues, the universe is evolving towards more beautiful minds and a `more intense beauty' (p. 274), then how can one approach this as a scientific claim? Who decides what is meant by 'beauty' here and how would one provde a consistent measure of it? Overall the improvements in the human condition do not seem to be as a result of human minds evolving, so much as scientific knowledge being applied to everyday problems. So a `comprehensive' discussion should surely include the objections to Haught's views. Steven Weinberg is mentioned in this essay and he has argued his case for a purposeless universe eloquently - it is a pity that he was not given room to respond. This is true of many of the essays which provide traditional religious views but are not countered by the objections to them.
The more I read this book, the more I felt that it belonged in `Theology', not even as a `Companion to Religion', as here advertised given its narrow perspectives on religion. I write as someone who worked for many years as a teacher and examiner in critical thinking and as such I cannot believe that anyone who has read in this field would be unaware of the many cogent and well supported objections to the views expressed here which makes the description 'comprehensive' completely inadequate. So this is a problem for Cambridge University Press to address. My two stars are mainly aimed at the publisher! As the book stands it will be of little use to students of the relationships between science and religion in general because they will be only provided with very limited perspectives, most of which are from one angle, that Christianity is necessarily supportive of science. Was the case of Galileo really atypical, as stated here, when the Papal Index of prohibited Books grew inexorably and between 10,000 and 12,000 books were burnt in Rome in one day alone in 1559? (Black, The Italian Inquisition, p.169.)

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