Since the 1960s or early 1970s, there has been an ongoing academic conversation, perhaps we can call it a field in its own right, in which scientifically-minded religion scholars and humanistically-minded scientists have discussed areas of overlap between these two discourses. This ongoing conversation—in this volume variously styled “religion and science,” “religion-and-science,” “religion/science,” “science and religion,” “Science and Religion,” and “the Science and Religion Dialogue (SRD)”—comprises texts that have challenged prominent pictures of the relationship between religion and science.
Several contributors identify the beginnings of this field in the work of Ian Barbour, who developed a typology of four ways to conceive the relationship between science and religion. First, there is the idea that religion and science, at least in the West, are in fundamental conflict. This picture became popular in the late nineteenth century with the work of John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White. Second, the notion that...
