Nancy K. Frankenberry - Böcker

This landmark interdisciplinary volume presents methodological options for the study of religion in the twenty-first century. Ten distinguished scholars offer radical interpretations of religious belief and language from a variety of perspectives: anthropology of religion, ritual studies, cognitive psychology, semantics, post-analytic philosophy, history of religions, and philosophy of religion. For the first time, a collection of original essays explores the significance of Donald Davidson's 'radical interpretation', Robert Brandom's 'inferentialism', and Richard Rorty's pragmatism for issues in the study of religion. Related topics include cultural variations in belief from Madagascar to China, experimental research from cognitive science, and the semantics of myth, metaphor, mana and manna. Radical Interpretation in Religion will be of interest to both general readers and specialists seeking a deeper understanding of new directions in the study of religion.

This landmark interdisciplinary volume presents methodological options for the study of religion in the twenty-first century. Ten distinguished scholars offer radical interpretations of religious belief and language from a variety of perspectives: anthropology of religion, ritual studies, cognitive psychology, semantics, post-analytic philosophy, history of religions, and philosophy of religion. For the first time, a collection of original essays explores the significance of Donald Davidson's 'radical interpretation', Robert Brandom's 'inferentialism', and Richard Rorty's pragmatism for issues in the study of religion. Related topics include cultural variations in belief from Madagascar to China, experimental research from cognitive science, and the semantics of myth, metaphor, mana and manna. Radical Interpretation in Religion will be of interest to both general readers and specialists seeking a deeper understanding of new directions in the study of religion.

The Faith of Scientists is an anthology of writings by twenty-one legendary scientists, from the dawn of the Scientific Revolution to the frontiers of science today, about their faith, their views about God, and the place religion holds--or doesn't--in their lives in light of their commitment to science. This is the first book to bring together so many world-renowned figures of Western science and present them in their own words, offering an intimate window into their private and public reflections on science and faith. Leading religion scholar Nancy Frankenberry draws from diaries, personal letters, speeches, essays, and interviews, and reveals that the faith of scientists can take many different forms, whether religious or secular, supernatural or naturalistic, conventional or unorthodox. These eloquent writings reflect a spectrum of views from diverse areas of scientific inquiry.Represented here are some of the most influential and colossal personalities in the history of science, from the founders of science such as Galileo, Johannes Kepler, Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, and Albert Einstein, to modern-day scientists like Carl Sagan, Stephen Jay Gould, Jane Goodall, Freeman Dyson, Stephen Hawking, Edward O. Wilson, and Ursula Goodenough. Frankenberry provides a general introduction as well as concise introductions to each chapter that place these writings in context and suggest further reading from the latest scholarship. As surprising as it is illuminating and inspiring, The Faith of Scientists is indispensable for students, scholars, and anyone seeking to immerse themselves in important questions about God, the universe, and science.

Why do many people think religion is subjective? Or symbolic? Or non-rational? This book brings together eighteen important twentieth-century essaus on these questions, by authors ranging from Ludwig Wittgenstein to Richard Rorty and Clifford Geertz. The editors show that such questions are both quite modern and powerfully influential in our Western thinking about religious belief. Moreover, they lead directly into the three most popular theories that attempt to make sense of religion: positivism, functionalism, and relativism. Selecting essays that represent each of these three theoretical positions, Frankenberry and Penner trace their incoherence and argue for a new method and theory for understanding religious beliefs.

Distinguished scholars provide the first book-length consideration of the work of philosopher and theologian Robert Cummings Neville, including a response from Neville himself.Interpreting Neville provides the first book-length treatment of the thought of Robert Cummings Neville, one of the most important and wide-ranging scholars working across the fields of philosophy, theology, and comparative studies today. Contributors assess the systematic structure and methodological unity of Neville's trilogy Axiology of Thinking, provide a postmodern contextualization of Neville's philosophy, and evaluate the critical relation of Neville to the history of Western philosophy. Metaphysical questions crucial to Neville's project are critiqued from different vantage points, theological problems are examined, and the comparative issues outstanding in Neville's understanding of Chinese philosophy are assessed. Enhancing the book is a rich concluding essay written by Neville himself in response to each author.[Contributors include George Allan, Delwin Brown, J. Harley Chapman, Chung-ying Cheng, Patricia Cook, Robert Corrington, Hermann Deuser, Lewis S. Ford, Nancy K. Frankenberry, David L. Hall, George R. Lucas, Jr., Robert C. Neville, Sandra Rosenthal, Marjorie Suchocki, Carl G. Vaught, and Edith Wyschogrod.]

Rarely in modern times has religion been associated with empiricism except to its own peril. This book represents a comprehensive and systematic effort to retrieve and develop the tradition of American religious empiricism for religious inquiry.Religion and Radical Empiricism offers a challenging account of how and why reflection on religious truth-claims must seek justification of those claims finally in terms of empirical criteria. Ranging through many of the major questions in philosophy of religion, the author weaves together a study of the varieties of empiricism in all its historical forms from Hume to Quine. She finds in James and Dewey; in Wieman, Meland, and Loomer of the Chicago School; in Whitehead; and in Abhidharma Buddhism constructive elements of a radically empirical approach to the controversial topic of religious experience. This work provides a strong counter-argument to critics of "revisionary theism," to caricatures of philosophy as "conversation," and to any collapse of the category of experience into its linguistic forms.