ABSTRACT

This book provides an in-depth ethnographic study of science and religion in the context of South Asia, giving voice to Indian scientists and shedding valuable light on their engagement with religion. Drawing on biographical, autobiographical, historical, and ethnographic material, the volume focuses on scientists’ religious life and practices, and the variety of ways in which they express them. Renny Thomas challenges the idea that science and religion in India are naturally connected and argues that the discussion has to go beyond binary models of ‘conflict’ and ‘complementarity’. By complicating the understanding of science and religion in India, the book engages with new ways of looking at these categories.

chapter |16 pages

Introduction

chapter 2|39 pages

Beyond disenchantment

Scientists, laboratories, and religion

chapter 3|25 pages

The making of scientist-believers

chapter 4|29 pages

Being atheistic, being scientific

Scientists as atheists

chapter 5|34 pages

Caste, religion, and the laboratory life

chapter |9 pages

Conclusion