This book examines, in the long run (from the seventeenth century to the present days), the various struggles for autonomy that scientific research had to fight against religious institutions.

Yves Gingras first analyzes the theological limits of the autonomy of scientific research in the seventeenth century. He then describes the long history of this quest for autonomy, from Galileo’s conviction for heresy in 1633 to Pope John Paul II’s apology after more than three hundred and fifty years. The author also dedicates a chapter to God and natural theology and how they became marginalized in the scientific field in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as naturalist scientific thinking started to take an interest in geology, natural history, the origins of man and the history of religions. Gingras reminds us of the many works that were placed on the Index for promoting scientific theories incompatible with religious dogma.

Finally, he examines the different uses of the expression "conflict between science and religion" since the early nineteenth century, as well as the context in which the rhetoric of the "dialogue between science and religion" emerged in the 1980s. With the rise of religious and neo-romantic spiritual movements that reject the conclusions of the most widely accepted scientific research, Yves Gingras urges us to take the side of reason.