Replication in the Humanities: Editorial for the June 2024 issue

Posted by Arthur C. Petersen on 2024-10-28

This issue [click here to browse the issue online; click here to view and download a PDF of the entire issue; and to order a printed copy for $6.75 (no-profit-to-journal price) through Amazon, choose for instance one of the following market places: US, UK, DE, FR, ES, IT, NL, PL, SE, JP, CA or AU] opens with an Editorial by John Slattery, who challenges all who are engaged with the field of science and religion to reconsider the role of eugenics in this field; he invites essay contributions for a thematic section in Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science.

Below, you will find brief introductions to the articles included in this issue, both in the general section and in the thematic section on replication in the humanities, as well as an overview of books reviewed in the latest edition of Reviews in Science, Religion and Theology.

Articles

This issue contains six general articles. Tim Lomas et al. showcase diverse ways through which love of creation has been expressed and can be appreciated, using a selection of ten religious and philosophical traditions; they try to find some common ground among these traditions by constructing a provisional set of items for a love of creation measure that would be applicable across them. Michael Winkelman offers a framework for understanding recurrent forms of mystical experiences as natural brain states; he discusses how different mystical experiences involve changes in specific neurologically mediated forms of self that provide the basis for universal forms of mystical experience. Gregory Lobo analyses René Girard’s “science of religion,” especially his “scapegoat” mechanism its role in the process of hominization; he sheds more light on this process by drawing on the neuroscientific concept of prefrontal synthesis and the related philosophical concept of collective intentionality. Carl-Johan Palmqvist provides some critical reflections on philosopher John Schellenberg’s project of “evolutionary religion” (a process that results in progress towards learning the truth about transcendent reality); he concludes, however, that humanity is currently too ignorant to begin this project. Patrick Becker tackles evolutionary approaches to religion (that is, biological explanations of religion) and the problem of transcendent meaning; he critiques a reductionist view that understands religion primarily in terms and argues that limiting religion to its evolutionarily ascertainable benefits overlooks the fact that these benefits only materialize when there is belief in the transcendent purpose that religion provides. And Stefano Bigliardi scrutinizes the conceptualization of science advanced by the Muslim public speaker and author Hamza Andreas Tzortzis in his book The Divine Reality; he argues that Tzortzis’s discussion suffers from problems related to the consistency and accuracy of the epistemological framework within which he defends (Islamic) theism.

Replicating John Hedley Brooke’s Work on the History of Science and Religion

In this thematic section on “Replicating John Hedley Brooke’s Work on the History of Science and Religion,” a central work on the history of science and religion is critically scrutinized as a demonstration of how replication can be approached in the humanities. The team, consisting of Rik Peels, Gijsbert van den Brink, Hans Van Eyghen, and Rachel Pear, introduce and reflect on their direct replication and conceptual replication of particularly chapter 3 of Brooke’s Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives (1991). Subsequently, John Hedley Brooke presents his reflections on the experience of his work being replicated and Jeremy Brown reflects on the project and explores which studies in historiography might lend themselves to replication.

Books reviewed in Reviews in Science, Religion and Theology

Reviews in Science, Religion and Theology is a quarterly joint publication of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology (ESSSAT) and the International Society for Science and Religion (ISSR) and is distributed free to all members of ESSSAT and ISSR. In order to give readers of Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science an overview of recent publications, we include the list of books reviewed in the latest Reviews issue (in this case, June 2024):

- Joshua Farris and Joanna Leidenhag, eds., The Origin of the Soul: A Conversation, London: Routledge, 2024

- Benjamín Labatut, The MANIAC, London: Pushkin Press, 2024

- Philip Ball, How Life Works: A User’s Guide to the New Biology, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2023

- Philip Goff, Why? The Purpose of the Universe, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023

- Christopher C. Knight, Exploring Religious Pluralism: From Mystical Theology to the Science–Theology Dialogue, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024