Science under Siege
Contesting the Secular Religion of Scientism
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Beschreibung
Identifying scientism as religion’s secular counterpart, this collection studies contemporary contestations of the authority of science. These controversies suggest that what we are witnessing today is not an increase in the authority of science at the cost of religion, but a dual decline in the authorities of religion and science alike. This entails an erosion of the legitimacy of universally binding truth claims, be they religiously or scientifically informed. Approaching the issue from a cultural-sociological perspective and building on theories from the sociology of religion, the volume unearths the cultural mechanisms that account for the headwind faced by contemporary science. The empirical contributions highlight how the field of academic science has lost much of its former authority vis-à-vis competing social realms; how political and religious worldviews define particular research findings as favorites while dismissing others; and how much of today’s distrust of science is directed against scientific institutions and academic scientists rather than against science per se.
Dick Houtman is Senior Professor of Sociology of Culture and Religion at the Center for Sociological Research at the University of Leuven, Belgium, and Faculty Fellow at the Center for Cultural Sociology, Yale University, USA.
Stef Aupers is Senior Professor of Media Culture at the Institute for Media Studies at the University of Leuven, Belgium.
Rudi Laermans is Senior Professor of Social Theory at the Center for Sociological Research at the University of Leuven, Belgium.
Identifying scientism as religion’s secular counterpart, this collection studies contemporary contestations of the authority of science. These controversies suggest that what we are witnessing today is not an increase in the authority of science at the cost of religion, but a dual decline in the authorities of religion and science alike. This entails an erosion of the legitimacy of universally binding truth claims, be they religiously or scientifically informed. Approaching the issue from a cultural-sociological perspective and building on theories from the sociology of religion, the volume unearths the cultural mechanisms that account for the headwind faced by contemporary science. The empirical contributions highlight how the field of academic science has lost much of its former authority vis-à-vis competing social realms; how political and religious worldviews define particular research findings as favorites while dismissing others; and how much of today’s distrust of science is directed against scientific institutions and academic scientists rather than against science per se.
Creatively applies theories from the sociology of religion to the authority of science Presents a timely discussion of the erosion of confidence in the authority of science through a cultural-sociological frame Argues for the eradication of claims of the “neutrality” of science, opening the door to a science that is more critical of how its own biases impede the quest for truth
Autor*in
Dick Houtman
Themen in »Science under Siege«
science academia confidence gap scientific method institutional trust conspiracy theory life science neuroscience conservative Protestantism mindfulness spirituality