Reconstructing Nature

Book excerpt: This book, first published in the U.K. by T&T Clark, expands on the authors' prestigious Glasgow Gifford Lectures of 1995-6. Brooke and Cantor herein examine the many different ways in which the relationship between science and religion has been presented throughout history. They contend that, in fact, neither science nor religion is reducible to some timeless "essence"--and they deftly criticize the various master-narratives that have been put forward in support of such "essentialist" theses. Along the way, they repeatedly demolish the clichés so typical of popular histories of the science and religion debate, demonstrating the impossibility of reducing these debates to a single narrative, or of narrowing this relationship to a paradigm of conflict.