Telling the story of science and religion: a nuanced account

3T} BJHS, 1996, 29, 357-9 Essay review Telling the story of science and religion: a nuanced account John Hedley Brooke, Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives. Cambridge History of Science Series. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Pp. x + 422. ISBN 0-521-23961-3, £32.50, $49.95 (hardback); 0-521-28374-4, £10.95, $13.95 (paperback). Readers familiar with the work of John Brooke will know that he has been a leading interpreter of the historical interaction between science and religion, especially natural theology. This recent book shows a mature historian at work. The volume's broad scope (roughly from 1543 to the present) and its arresting themes, presented with careful precision, command attention. Nor has this book gone unnoticed. It has won a number of accolades, chief among them being the 1992 Watson Davis Prize by the History of Science Society in North America for the best work targeted for a general lay audience or for a student audience. It is a book that clearly deserves review in this journal. Can we learn from history ? The stated object of John Brooke's book 'is not to deny that assumption but to show that the lessons are far from simple' (p. 5). Consequently, the lessons to be learned about the complex set of interactions between science and religion are not to be captured by general theses of one form or another. This book should not be regarded as a pedagogical exercise in presenting these historical lessons, but rather as an effort 'to assist in the creation of critical perspectives' (p. 5). It also, the author takes pains to insist, is 'a historically based commentary' rather than a typical historical narrative. The historical episodes Brooke selects are in a sense not as crucial as is his conviction that religion and science have always been interrelated. In fact he concludes the book with this remark: 'But whether belief in the supreme worth of every human life, and the action such an ideal requires, can be sustained without reference to the transcendent, is a question unlikely to be laid to rest' (p. 347). The episodes Brooke does examine are ones chosen to display a plethora of interactions between science and religion and simultaneously make the reader ever more alert to the contingency and complexity of the historical moment. Brooke's temperate and even-handed analysis invites us to think along, and move beyond simplistic and frequently polemical solutions to the problems. Look and see, he gently argues, it is not a choice of either war or peace between science and religion. Those very categories and choices hide a complexity of issues. If we were to stick to rigid definitions of either religion or science we could easily, far too easily, exclude important questions that were in fact asked. Nor for that matter is it first of all a question of mediation or reciprocal relation between the two. Rather we need to remain aware of how particular individuals in their peculiar context 'wrestled with fundamental questions concerning their relationship with nature and God' (p. 5). Religion and science are caught in an entangled bank of interrelationships, and the methods employed to tease out these relationships 358 Essay review display diversity, subtlety and ingenuity. So the focus is on individuals, rather than explicating grand theses. This book then is less a recipe for action than an invitation to reflection. Brooke accordingly supplies example upon example of the always changing boundaries of science and religion. The truth is in the details, and it is one of a subtle, everchanging complexity and diversity. After these preliminary considerations in chapter 1 we come to the major part of the book. In chronological order Brooke begins with the scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. His major point in chapter 2 is to argue that rather than separating science and religion the scientific revolution is far better characterized as a differentiation of the two from their status of subordination in the Middle Ages. This process of differentiation clearly differs from Boyle to Descartes to Galileo as Brooke takes pains to show. Chapter 3 tackles the perennial topic of the causal connection between Protestantism and the rise of modern science, or as Brooke cleverly puts it: was 'insubordination in science...encouraged by insubordination in religion' (p. 81). Receptivity toward the Copernican astronomy, he concludes, did not depend in the first instance on religious institutional affiliation. Freedom of debate and publication in both Catholic and Protestant circles played an important role as well. Even the usual historical claim that the Copernican astronomical picture banished humanity from its central location is subject to qualification. Brooke presents some Copernicans who argued that to consider the earth to be one among the planets actually enhanced humanity's importance. The next chapter details a 'great irony'. The mechanical philosophy of the seventeenth century, with its two principles of matter and motion, could serve both those wishing to safeguard God's action in this world and those advocating that these very principles ruled out any divine intervention or interference. A similarly nuanced analysis is made in chapter 5 on the Enlightenment; attacks on institutionally established religion by deists, materialists and agnostics, were frequently carried out not by natural philosophers, but by thinkers with a social or political ideological axe to grind. Scientific theories could be put to a multitude of uses and interpretations, each reflecting a particular context. The chapter on natural theology, chapter 6, is Brooke's best, in my opinion, particularly the insights he presents on the dangers of the design argument. Brooke writes: 'The problem for Christian apologetics was this: in seeking to capitalize on the most accessible proof of God's existence, and one having the authority of the sciences behind it, they came close to saying that what they meant by God was the craftsman, the mechanic, the architect, the supreme contriver behind nature's contrivances. From this to atheism could be one short step. It only required an alternative metaphysics in which the appearance of design could be dismissed as illusory...If the only proof came from design, one was left with nothing on its collapse' (p. 195). Although Brooke concentrates on British versions of natural theology there is also a discussion of Continental versions, specifically the impact that Kant's critical philosophy had on German natural theology. There is also a carefully crafted discussion of the influence of natural theology within science with respect to the regulation of scientific thought, a selective role it could play in favouring one theory rather than another, and a constitutive role. The reciprocal relation of the diversification of natural theologies as a consequence of scientific developments is also elaborated. Chapter 7 traces the rise of the historical sciences - natural history, cosmology, geology and paleontology - and their interaction with religious belief, followed by a chapter (8) Essay review 359 devoted to evolutionary theory and the challenge of Darwinism. Of special merit is the discussion of 'higher criticism' of the Bible in nineteenth-century Germany and the confluence of scientific and historical criticism. The postscript on the twentieth century is rather sparse. It focuses on Freud, aspects of quantum mechanics, holistic conceptions such as ecological interdependencies and the holistic metaphysics presented in Fritjof Capra's The Turning Point, and science and human values. Noticeably absent is any discussion of modern cosmology. The book concludes with a long fifty-six page bibliographical essay. It is by far the best guide to the recent literature on the historical relations of science and religion. As ably crafted as this book is there remain some lingering questions. Do the categories of science and religion really do justice to the complex historical situations Brooke describes? Are they in fact the categories one should use? Or do they merely reflect a language game in which usage 'defines' meaning? In the postscript Brooke tells us openly what he has presented: 'The principle aim of this book has been to reveal something of the complexity of the relationship between science and religion as they have interacted in the past. Popular generalizations about that relationship, whether couched in terms of war or peace, simply do not stand up to serious investigation. There is no such thing as the relationship between science and religion. It is what different individuals and communities have made of it in a plethora of different contexts' (p. 321). If in fact it is a danger to abstract science and religion from their social contexts, could not an equal danger be that they could also be thoroughly swallowed up or emasculated by their contexts ? What is to prevent them from becoming mere vacuous references to socially shared conventions? There appears to be some internal tension or dialectic at work in Brooke's thought. Brooke does not want to guarantee or assume too much when he uses the terms science and religion, fearful that he could distort the historically contingent moment in his analysis. And yet he admits science and religion have a tenacity that is simply amazing. That fact also needs to be accounted for. Perhaps religion is best seen as a total way of human life, as the depth dimension or relation in all human functioning towards an Ultimate or Transcendent One. Science could then be viewed as one of many possible ways of human functioning, but certainly not a domain next to or alongside a religious one. Any book that discusses issues as complex as these and in as fine a detail as this book does will perhaps be difficult for a wider public audience or undergraduate student to follow. I speak from personal experience in using this book in a history of science class for second- and third-year college students. They invariably want simple answers to complex questions and are generally impatient with the amount of detail presented in this work requiring them to construct their own synthesis. To obtain full benefit of Brooke's approach the reader needs to bring substantial background knowledge to the book. But that the book is challenging, and that it forces one to eschew easy answers is to be applauded. It also identifies further areas for scholarly investigation. So take it up and read it closely, if you have not already done so. It is worth the effort. ARIE LEEGWATER Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Ml 49546, USA