The Western Epistemic Tradition and the Scientific Study of Religion - Donald Wiebe
Latin Christendom and Scientific Thought in the Middle Ages
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
A science-like intellectual activity did not entirely disappear from the post-Alexandrian Mediterranean world. However, by the fifth and sixth centuries of the Common Era that mode of thought reached its lowest ebb. Between 500 and 1000 CE there was no longer a community of thinkers who could both comprehend and promote this kind of high-level naturalistic thought. Nevertheless, this period of history also harboured significant political, legal, and social transformations, and intellectual developments that contributed to a renewed interest in the natural world.