David H Nikkel
Biographic Data
| ID | 965790 |
|---|---|
| NAME | David H Nikkel |
| GIVEN NAMES | David H |
| FAMILY NAME | Nikkel |
| SIGNATURE | NIKKEL D H |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of North Carolina at Pembroke |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4471-2563 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 12 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
E Cognition and Major World Religions’ Anthropology and Ontology
4E cognition offers resources supporting an anthropology and an ontology that overcome mind/body and related dualisms that contradict the original understandings of some major world religions, including the Western monotheisms and some Asian religions. 4E cognition embraces a holism with respect to the human organism, enabling a rapprochement with the Hebrew biblical, New Testament, and Qur’anic view of the human being as a psycho-somatic unity, …
Merleau-Ponty's phenomenal body and the study of religion
In opposition to dualism of mind over against body and matter, Maurice Merleau-Ponty offers his experiential, lived, or ‘phenomenal’ body. Meaning, in the sense of both knowledge and value, arises from our embodied engagement and mutual constitution with our natural-social world. This article argues that two types of understandings of the nature of the body are still common in religious studies, which reinscribe Cartesian dualism by opting for on…
Challenges from 4e Cognition to the Standard Cognitive Science of Religion Model
Embodied, enactive cognition, which is also embedded or emplaced cognition and extended cognition through tools, including language, presents various challenges to the standard model of the cognitive science of religion. In its focus on unconscious brain mechanisms, the standard model downplays or eliminates religious meaning as epiphenomenal or illusory. It often denies that religion, once present, is adaptive or admits as adaptive only costly s…
The Scopes Trial and Its Long Shadow
With the centennial this year of the Scopes "Monkey" Trial, this article examines the antagonistic relationship between American Christian fundamentalism and science, particularly evolution and other scientific knowledge challenging literal biblical interpretation. While the trial itself spanned only eleven days, its shadow has been quite long indeed. The article analyzes the background of the trial, fundamentalism then and now-including a later …
William James: The Mystical Experimentation of a Sick Soul
Especially in The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James developed the polar categories of healthy-minded individuals content with their once-born religion versus sick souls who need to become twice-born in order to find religious peace. Biographers of James have concluded that he does not fit well under either of his polar categories. Drawing on both data about James' life and on his philosophical and theological writings, I demur from…
Tradition as Body
Coming from the perspective of embodied or enactive cognition, this article argues for the bodily roots of all tradition. Given that tradition entails a givenness inherited from the past meeting with interpretation/modification/construction in the present, it examines tradition as an aspect of self-organizing cultural, particularly religious, systems, including in situations far from equilibrium. Building upon Michael Polanyi’s idea that what we …
Adam Prior, Body of Christ Incarnate for You
A Theory of the Embodied Nature of Religion
Personhood in a Poteatian, Post-Critical Vein
Curing Dualistic, Disembodied Patterns of Thinking in the Academy
This essay develops aspects and implications of Poteat’s critique of the Enlightenment’s critical paradigm and development of post-critical thinking in dialogue with Pascal in his dissertation and four post-critical thinkers who figured prominently in his project: Kierkegaard, Merleau,Ponty, Wittgenstein, and Polanyi. Then it critiques from a Poteatian perspective the critical, dualistic, discarnate picture that still dominates the academy, espec…
The Wildness of Creation: An Interpretation of the Voice from the Whirlwind in Job
The significance of God’s speaking through the voice from the whirlwind and Job’s subsequent repentance has often been interpreted as a scolding by God for questioning divine providence and/or as the assertion of inscrutable mystery. This paper offers an alternative hermeneutics consonant with an open and relational understanding of the nature of God, arguing that Job can best be interpreted as a strong endorsement of the unpredictability and wil…
Divine Revelation and Human Practice: Responsive and Imaginative Participation
Divine Revelation and Human Practice: Responsive and Imaginative Participation
The Wildness of Creation: An Interpretation of the Voice from the Whirlwind in Job
The significance of God’s speaking through the voice from the whirlwind and Job’s subsequent repentance has often been interpreted as a scolding by God for questioning divine providence and/or as the assertion of inscrutable mystery. This paper offers an alternative hermeneutics consonant with an open and relational understanding of the nature of God, arguing that Job can best be interpreted as a strong endorsement of the unpredictability and wil…
Personhood in a Poteatian, Post-Critical Vein
Curing Dualistic, Disembodied Patterns of Thinking in the Academy
This essay develops aspects and implications of Poteat’s critique of the Enlightenment’s critical paradigm and development of post-critical thinking in dialogue with Pascal in his dissertation and four post-critical thinkers who figured prominently in his project: Kierkegaard, Merleau,Ponty, Wittgenstein, and Polanyi. Then it critiques from a Poteatian perspective the critical, dualistic, discarnate picture that still dominates the academy, espec…
Adam Prior, Body of Christ Incarnate for You
A Theory of the Embodied Nature of Religion
Tradition as Body
Coming from the perspective of embodied or enactive cognition, this article argues for the bodily roots of all tradition. Given that tradition entails a givenness inherited from the past meeting with interpretation/modification/construction in the present, it examines tradition as an aspect of self-organizing cultural, particularly religious, systems, including in situations far from equilibrium. Building upon Michael Polanyi’s idea that what we …
William James: The Mystical Experimentation of a Sick Soul
Especially in The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James developed the polar categories of healthy-minded individuals content with their once-born religion versus sick souls who need to become twice-born in order to find religious peace. Biographers of James have concluded that he does not fit well under either of his polar categories. Drawing on both data about James' life and on his philosophical and theological writings, I demur from…
Merleau-Ponty's phenomenal body and the study of religion
In opposition to dualism of mind over against body and matter, Maurice Merleau-Ponty offers his experiential, lived, or ‘phenomenal’ body. Meaning, in the sense of both knowledge and value, arises from our embodied engagement and mutual constitution with our natural-social world. This article argues that two types of understandings of the nature of the body are still common in religious studies, which reinscribe Cartesian dualism by opting for on…
Challenges from 4e Cognition to the Standard Cognitive Science of Religion Model
Embodied, enactive cognition, which is also embedded or emplaced cognition and extended cognition through tools, including language, presents various challenges to the standard model of the cognitive science of religion. In its focus on unconscious brain mechanisms, the standard model downplays or eliminates religious meaning as epiphenomenal or illusory. It often denies that religion, once present, is adaptive or admits as adaptive only costly s…
The Scopes Trial and Its Long Shadow
With the centennial this year of the Scopes "Monkey" Trial, this article examines the antagonistic relationship between American Christian fundamentalism and science, particularly evolution and other scientific knowledge challenging literal biblical interpretation. While the trial itself spanned only eleven days, its shadow has been quite long indeed. The article analyzes the background of the trial, fundamentalism then and now-including a later …
E Cognition and Major World Religions’ Anthropology and Ontology
4E cognition offers resources supporting an anthropology and an ontology that overcome mind/body and related dualisms that contradict the original understandings of some major world religions, including the Western monotheisms and some Asian religions. 4E cognition embraces a holism with respect to the human organism, enabling a rapprochement with the Hebrew biblical, New Testament, and Qur’anic view of the human being as a psycho-somatic unity, …
Philosophy (9 works) · Epistemology (8 works) · Aesthetics (4 works) · Psychology (4 works) · Religion and Society Interactions (4 works) · Theology (4 works) · Embodied cognition (3 works) · Sociology (3 works) · Theology and Philosophy of Evil (3 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (2 works)