The Western Epistemic Tradition and the Scientific Study of Religion - Donald Wiebe

The Western Epistemic Tradition and the Scientific Study of Religion - Donald Wiebe

Setting the Boundaries for the Scientific Study of Religious Phenomena

The Western Epistemic Tradition and the Scientific Study of Religion - Donald Wiebe

Donald Wiebe [+-]
University of Toronto
Donald Wiebe is Professor of Philosophy of Religion in Trinity College at the University of Toronto, Canada. He is the author of Religion and Truth: Towards and Alternative Paradigm for the Study of Religion (De Gruyter, 1981), The Irony of Theology and the Nature of Religious Thought (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1991), Beyond Legitimation: Essays on the Problem of Religious Knowledge (Palgrave Macmillan, 1994), The Politics of Religious Studies: The Continuing Conflict with Theology in the Academy (Palgrave Macmillan, 1999) and The Learned Practice of Religion in the Modern University (Bloomsbury, 2019).

Description

The assumption that a scientifically respectable study of ‘religion’ as a field of teaching and research depends on defining ‘religion’ is unhelpful since, as an abstract English noun, the term has no empirical reference range. Limiting ‘Religious Studies’ to the study of modes of human thought and behaviour described as ‘religious,’ by virtue of their association with beliefs in superhuman agent, will ground the field in an intersubjectively observable subject matter.

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Citation

Wiebe, Donald. Setting the Boundaries for the Scientific Study of Religious Phenomena. The Western Epistemic Tradition and the Scientific Study of Religion. Equinox eBooks Publishing, United Kingdom. p. 1-23 May 2023. ISBN 9781800502734. https://www.equinoxpub.com/home/view-chapter/?id=44003. Date accessed: 29 Mar 2024 doi: 10.1558/equinox.44003. May 2023

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