Method Today - Redescribing Approaches to the Study of Religion - Brad Stoddard
15. Ontological v. Axiological Approaches to Religion
Method Today - Redescribing Approaches to the Study of Religion - Brad Stoddard
Joel Harrison [+]
Northwestern University
Joel Harrison is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Religious Studies at Northwestern University. His work focuses on the intersection between social theory, theology, and philosophy of religion at the turn of the twentieth century in Germany and questions of theory and method in religious studies.
Description
This chapter argues that Taves and Asprem do not attend to the conceptual differences between explanatory accounts in the human sciences and those of the natural sciences. Instead, their theory reduces all phenomena, ideational or material, to a natural scientific material account of cause and effect, limiting the theory’s analytical power.