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The headlines concerned with the relations of science and religion in our media have a depressing repetition to them. Fellows of the Royal Society are told to go into the public sphere to ‘‘nail the creationists’’ (The Observer newspaper, 14th September 2008). In spite of nearly three decades of scholarship repeatedly decrying the inappropriately monochrome characterisation of science and religion as interacting violently or harmoniously, the headlines dominate to gloss the details and intricacies of historical scholarship. The suspicion of harmony persists amongst some historians who suppose that historians of this relationship are unwitting vehicles for a harmonist agenda: a monarchy of context (if context is indeed ‘king’) acting unilaterally to remove all appearance of conflict. Thomas Dixon’s introduction to the study of science and religion proceeds under the assumptions that both conflict and harmony in histories of science and religion require appropriate deconstruction. The book attends to methodological themes such as philosophical foundations and historiography (Chapter 1), authority (Chapter 2) and hermeneutics (Chapter 5) whilst also highlighting the historical polyvalence of well-known individuals like Galileo (Chapter 2) and Darwin (Chapter 4) and providing clear access into intellectual themes like providence (Chapter 3) and mind and morality (Chapter 6).

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