Hatfields and McCoys. Montagues and Capulets. Cats and dogs. Yankees and Red Sox. These are a few of the most famous feuds in history. None, however, has had the civilizational consequences of the one between science and religion. Their mortal enmity is proverbial.
It’s also largely, albeit not entirely, apocryphal. Far from being at each other’s throats, for much of history, science and religion have coexisted not only amicably but often arm in arm. That’s not how their connection is usually understood. But in Magisteria: The Entangled Histories of Science and Religion, Nicholas Spencer’s well-written, wide-ranging, balanced, and informative survey of their fraught but fruitful relationship from antiquity to the present day, the author argues persuasively that it should be.
