This chapter investigates the conditions for dialogue between science and religion, and asks what makes dialogue possible or desirable. Sometimes, dialogue has simply amounted to theology and religion accommodating themselves to the sciences, and this can serve to reinforce unhelpful ways of categorising science and religion. Different models for dialogue are suggested by past relations between natural philosophy and religion, understood as formative practices (rather than proposition-generating activities). An alternative approach is also suggested by the problem of incommensurability, initially applied in different ways by Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend, and Alasdair MacIntyre to the relations between competing scientific frameworks, but which is also applicable also to science–religion relations. Thinking of ‘science’ and ‘religion’ in terms of historical traditions, to use MacIntyre’s expression, leads to a different understanding of their possible relationships. Historical and sociological descriptions of scientific and religious practices, in short, should play a more prominent role in our understandings of sciences, religions, and their relations.

At Environmental Studies at the University of Oslo, students began their semester by taking a weeklong hike over the scenic Hardangervidda mountain plateau. It was designed to take the students away from the capitalist and industrial setting of the city and deep into the periphery of a picturesque nature. Empowered by the mountains they could enter the valleys of industrialism and shallow ecological thinking with a do-gooding gaze of knowing what’s right from wrong. The institution was the intellectual think tank for the Deep Ecologists who were under attack from both Marxists, who saw them as counter-revolutionary, and supporters of the European Community, who thought they were unable to appreciate international cooperation empowered by capitalism. These tensions would energize and radicalize Environmental Studies scholars towards an ideological vision of a future world in ecological equilibrium. Environmental Studies was to point out an alternative direction for the nation other than communism and consumer capitalism. As the vanguard of social change, the scholars associated with Environmental Studies saw themselves as harboring an environmental vision for Norway that could inspire the world.