The impact of successful scientific theorizing on conceptualizing religion

Bibliographic Data

ID4372003
AuthorsRobert N Mccauley (0000-0002-6384-3887, Emory University, corresponding author)
Year2009
Volume39
Issue2
Pages200-202
Publication date2009-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueReligion (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0048-721X • E-ISSN: 1096-1151
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1016/j.religion.2009.04.008
OpenAlexW1965330278
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited14

Empirically successful scientific theories are intellectual hurricanes. They flood lowlands set aside for worries about definitions. They carry away philosophical reflections that are less dense than the accumulated scientific findings that give these storms their strength, and they fundamentally reshape the conceptual landscape. The history of scholarship reveals that once an empirically corroborated scientific theory explains and predicts phenomena in some domain noticeably better than the available alternatives (whether those alternatives are scientific theories or not), among experts at least, the process of conceptualizing those phenomena, thereafter, mostly floats along on the surface of debates about the comparative scientific merits of that theory and its competitors. Earlier debates about definitions lose most of their interest until new theories arise that generate new, less easily managed empirical findings in the pertinent domains. Across the centuries, the fates of such concepts as ‘inertia ’ and ‘planet ’ are fitting illustrations of these patterns, as are, more recently, the fates of such concepts as ‘gene ’ and ‘deciding’ (aka “decision making”). The quandary for humanists in our time is how to manage the fact that humans ’ mental lives and actions and the social and cultural arrangements that they constitute have increasingly become objects of just such penetrating scientific proposals and investigations. Humanists are right (though sometimes for

Epistemology · Sociology · Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation · Philosophy · Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology · Study and Philosophy of Religion

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