The Western Epistemic Tradition and the Scientific Study of Religion; 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).

This book provides an account of how a science of religion was able to emerge from the devotional, catechetical, theological, and philosophical forms of ‘religious studies’ that have generally characterized this field of scholarship. Although elements of the scientific study of religion can be found in the scholarly engagement with religion in the academy today, it is still primarily associated with religious and nonscientific humanistic quests for meaning, and the foundations for a flourishing existence. The idea of a scientific study of religion first emerged some 2500 years ago with the ancient Greeks but this history will show that the conditions for a strictly scientific study of religion didn’t emerge until the end of the nineteenth century. The purpose of this new science, like that of the natural and social sciences, is to seek objective knowledge about religious thought and behaviour for its own sake. For that reason, it is argued, the scientific study of religion ought to be established in the curriculum of the modern research university.

This book is intended for students who are enrolled in religious studies programs, their teachers, university administrators, and others who are simply curious about the character of the study of religion most appropriate in the context of the modern research university.

Prelims

Preface ix-xiii

Chapter 1

Setting the Boundaries for the Scientific Study of Religious Phenomena [+–] 1-23

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.

Chapter 2

The Deep History of the Scientific Study of Religious Thought and Behaviour [+–] 25-44

The ‘deep history’ of the cognitive capacities of the human mind will account for both the early mythic and religious modes of human thought, as well as for the social and cultural developments that led to the creation of a scientific mode of thought that made possible the scientific study of myth, magic, and religion.

Chapter 3

From Myth to Proto-Science: A Transformational Turning Point in the History of Human Thought [+–] 45-63

There is significant agreement among philosophers and historians that social, economic, and political conditions in ancient Greece made possible the emergence of a new, non-mythical, mode of thought. The philosophy of the pre-Socratic cosmologists from the Milesians to the atomists gave birth to a new cultural value of knowledge for the sake of knowledge alone that made possible the eventual emergence of modern scientific thinking.

Chapter 4

The Rise and Decline of the Sciences in the Hellenistic Period [+–] 65-83

A brief account is provided of the advancement of ‘science-like’ thinking in the Hellenistic period which, in religio-cultural rather than political terms, stretches from the death of Alexander the Great to the decrees of Theodosius in the last decades of the fourth century of the Common Era. This overview will show why the argument whether Aristotle and his successors, or the pre-Socratics before them, gave birth to science is misleading.

Chapter 5

Latin Christendom and Scientific Thought in the Middle Ages [+–] 85-103

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.

Chapter 6

The Renaissance, Scientific Revolution, and Enlightenment [+–] 105-123

The intellectual developments in Europe in the period between the Renaissance and Romanticism, including ‘the age of discovery’ of the world beyond Europe, are essential for understanding the ultimate emergence of a scientific study of religion. The Scientific Revolution and the search for explanations of natural phenomena based simply upon human reason provided a framework for the scientific explanation of social and cultural phenomena.

Chapter 7

The Age of Discovery and the Protestant Reformation [+–] 125-145

The discovery of the new world confronted European intellectuals with new religious traditions of unknown peoples. This created a range of epistemological problems that altered the very tenor of European life and shook European confidence in the universality of Christianity. The publication of the seven volumes of Religious Ceremonies and Customs of the World by Bernard Picard and Jean-Frédéric Bernard early in the eighteenth century encouraged a sympathetic openness to new religious traditions that made possible a comparative study of religions.

Chapter 8

Crossing a Threshold in the Scholarly Study of Religion [+–] 147-166

What might be called ‘the early modern study of religion,’ grounded an attempt to create a coherent scientific field from ‘religious studies’ in Great Britain and Holland. It was not an entirely autonomous academic discipline, nor was it a fully scientific enterprise. Nevertheless, as one historian of the period put it, it gave that academic enterprise “an impulse, a shape, a terminology and a set of ideals” that made a genuinely scientific study of religion possible in the twentieth century.

Chapter 9

Modernity, Postmodernity, and the Study of Religion [+–] 167-188

The fourteenth-century Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution, the discovery of a new epistemic tradition in European thought, and the formation of the secular state made the development of science, and its application to the study of human culture including religion, possible. The idea of a scientific study of religion emerged in the nineteenth century and was brought to fruition in the twentieth. It has not yet, however, been firmly established in modern research universities in Europe, Britain, America, or elsewhere; he idea is still very much a matter of scholarly debate.

Chapter 10

Epilogue: A Scientific Revolution in Slow Motion 189-192

End Matter

Bibliography 193-204

Index 205-212

Reviews

In an era in which even academics cannot tell the difference between truth and power, the burden of argument and claims to identity rights, Wiebe’s staunch physicalism is an important prophylaxis against contemporary absurdities and scientific obscurity. Based on an exposition of the Western epistemic tradition, Wiebe persuasively demonstrates why a genuinely scientific study of religion is essential to the modern academy and integral to the endeavour of the university.
Professor Anders Klostergaard Petersen, University of Aarhus

Donald Wiebe argues that the academic study of religions should be restructured as a scientific enterprise, accepting only naturalistic explanations and pursuing knowledge for its own sake. In this incisive book of intellectual history, Wiebe shows that the scientific study of religion has been made possible by a long intellectual tradition – “the Western epistemic tradition” – that draws not only from the European Enlightenment, the Scientific Revolution, and the Renaissance, but also from the proto-science of Aristotle and the Ionian pre-Socratics, and ultimately from the evolutionary development of the cognitive capacities of the human mind. This book is invaluable for anyone who wants to take seriously this neglected option for the contemporary university.
Professor Kevin Schilbrack, Appalachian State University

Something is rotten in the state of Religious Studies. The discipline’s damaged foundations have been neglected for far too long, and ghosts and spooky dogmas haunt its crumbling academic halls and bookish endeavours. As Hamlet bravely uncovered the institutional web of corruption, omertà, and decay in his kingdom, so Donald Wiebe engages with the history of the study of religion from Antiquity to the present to denounce how fully scientific approaches to religion have been, and are still, constantly belittled or crushed by theological, political, and spiritual agendas. Wiebe’s book is the ultimate honest review of the field, and its unparalleled critical acumen and challenging theses make it a must read for seasoned religious studies scholars, experienced historians of religions, and students unaware of the field’s problematic history.
Leonardo Ambasciano, author of An Unnatural History of Religions

Overall, Wiebe demonstrates a deep knowledge of the field’s history and debates but, more importantly, offers a particular solution which he deems the only feasible one for the discipline’s survival and future: a scientific study of religion based on the scientific principles of modernity. I agree with his assessment although few in today’s ideologically-laden academia, I reckon, would espouse his diagnosis and cure. This, however, does not mean that one should give up the attempt to persuade their peers and Wiebe’s long career and publications have repeatedly indicated his persistence and consistency.
Religion

Wiebe’s book is a compelling and erudite showcase of his dedication to the scientific study of religion. It reflects his unwavering commitment to advancing a rigorous, scholarly, and scientific methodology for understanding religion(s). As such, it will undoubtedly be appreciated by all who share this approach, which seems increasingly marginal in contemporary academia.
Religious Studies Review

Religion

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The Western Epistemic Tradition and the Scientific Study of Religion

Donald Wiebe [+–]

University of Toronto

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