Overview

In the late 1800s, John W. Draper and Andrew D. White established a widespread belief in an irreconcilable "warfare" of science with "dogmatic theology." Both depicted a historical battle of enlightened, progressive, objective reason (science) continually advancing against blind ignorance, superstition, and prejudice (religion), with Galileo's trial and condemnation as the central illustration. Although historians have long known that this portrait relied on highly biased selections and interpretations of the historical evidence, it remains fixed in the popular imagination. In fact, relations between Christianity and science in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were extremely complex—by turns mutually antagonistic, indifferent, or supportive—as both underwent profound changes during the parallel courses of the Reformation and the Scientific Revolution.

Background

Prior to the sixteenth century, relations between natural philosophy (as science was...