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C. Mackenzie Brown: Hindu Perspectives on Evolution: Darwin, Dharma, and Design . (Routledge Hindu Studies Series.) xii, 276 pp. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2012. $155. ISBN 978 0 415 77970 8.

temporary scientists” (p. 63). This seems too simplistic. The comparison between the Hindu conception of the cosmic body and the physical universe of the scientific worldview would also seem forced, as would the supposition that the mere consideration of the broadly conceived “natural world” within Vaisṇava devotional (bhakti) traditions serves as an adequate touchstone for comparison with the ideals of scientific enquiry. It may have been worth devoting more attention, from the outset, to some of the key contrasting assumptions of an amoral as opposed to a value-laden physical universe that inform the outlooks of scientific modernity and Classical Indian metaphysics respectively. It would not have occurred to a Vaisṇava scholastic even to question the ethical or soteriological worth of undertaking enquiry into the natural world and yet it is precisely such consideration that is bracketed off from modern scientific enquiry. There might also have been some descriptive historical account of how Hindus themselves have responded to science, e.g. the ways in which episodes of the Mahābhārata have been invoked in quasi-Nationalist support of Indian research into stem cell research, etc. Such a descriptive account might have proved useful alongside the more theoretical and speculative approach adopted, and may have provided a more solid historical basis for some of the comparisons made. Nonetheless, if the debate between science and religion is to be truly global and the dialogue conversational – not just a matter of translating the terms of religion into those of science and vice versa – then Edelmann’s work is a valuable first step toward making this a reality.