RT Article
T1 The Sisyphean discipline : a précis of "An Unnatural History of Religions"
JF Religio
VO 28
IS 1
SP 3
OP 20
A1 Ambasciano, Leonardo
A2 Ambasciano, Leonardo
LA English
YR 2020
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1743531990
AB The present contribution offers a recapitulation of the author's book entitled An Unnatural History of Religions: Academia, Post-truth and the Quest for Scientific Knowledge (2019). The book is intended to offer a most comprehensive account of the History of Religions as an academic discipline, from its inception as a Victorian science of religion to the postmodern rejection of master narratives and from the birth of contemporary Religious Studies to the recent resurgence of cognitive and evolutionary approaches. One of the major themes to emerge from the historiographical analysis is the constant disciplinary temptation to move aside scientific explanations in favour of fideistic redescriptions. Ever struggling to come to terms with science, the historical study of religions in all the major national schools of the past considered here has reaffirmed time and again the absolute value of religion as epistemic truth, delegitimizing, depreciating, and discarding scientific and rational tools as useless for grasping the inner core of human consciousness.
K1 History and Philosophy of Science
K1 history of religions
K1 Cognition
K1 Evolution
K1 Historiography
K1 method and theory
K1 Post-truth
DO 10.5817/Rel2020-1-1