In their introduction, Mark A. Noll and David N. Livingstone outline the nature of the volume, quipping, “There has never been systemic warfare between science and theology, and this is a book that explains why the notion nonetheless lives on” (1). This aptly characterizes the matrix of essays in this edited volume, which stems from a conference of historians and sociologists of science on the warfare thesis—the idea that science and religion are and always have been irrevocably at war. The in-person debate has been captured in each chapter's clear arguments.
The volume is organized into three unnotated sections. The first is thematic and foundational. Lawrence M. Principe analyzes the origin of the warfare thesis by Andrew Dickson White and John William Draper in the late nineteenth century, and Maurice A. Finocchiaro outlines the Galileo affair, distinguishing between its proceedings and reputation across history. Notably absent is a parallel chapter about Darwin and Darwinism. The second section explores the relationship between religious practitioners and science—Catholics, Orthodox, Liberal Protestants, Evangelicals, Jews, and Muslims. Throughout the volume, each author takes a different geographic focus, most frequently American or British. The final section incorporates the scholarship of historians and sociologists in chapters on professional and ideological groups’ disciplinary perspectives. John Hedley Brooke reviews relevant historical scholarship in “Historians,” and “Scientists” by sociologists Elaine Howard Ecklund (the only female contributor) and Christopher P. Scheitle is the only chapter to cover the science-religion relationship in countries where non-Abrahamic faiths predominate. Others explore the New Atheists and the general populace. Drawing from primary research and extensive knowledge of the field, the volume offers a nonlinear discussion about why the warfare thesis persists among non-historians despite agreement among historians of science that it is not an accurate representation of the relationships of science and religion.
