Book Review: Ronald L. Numbers (ed.): Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths About Science and Religion
In this edited volume, twenty-five scholars make an effort to “puncture” twenty-five of the most widely held “myths” concerning religion and science. The key word in the title, ‘myth’, is used by the editor “to designate a claim that is false” (p. 7); the work is thus set up to ‘debunk’ false narratives rather than analyze complex relationship between such ‘myths’ and the ways they operate in modern ideology. The other two keywords (“science” and “religion”) in the catchy title have not been defined, but the thrust of the book suggests that what the authors were asked to do was to debunk a particular understanding of “religion”, “science”, as well as “religion and science relationship”. This particular understanding is anchored in the history of Western civilization, hence the scope of the work is rather limited, as all but one myths are from one shade of science and religion discourse. The exceptional ‘myth’ (“That Medieval Islamic Culture Was Inhospitable to Science”) apparently belongs to Islamic culture, but since the question itself is the fabrication of Western historians of science and response caters to their own concerns and anxieties, its inclusion is does not add any new perspective to the myths.
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Muzaffar Iqbal
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