Science Fiction and the Ideological Definition of Religion
Issue: Vol 19 No. 4 (2016)
Journal: Implicit Religion
Subject Areas: Religious Studies
DOI: 10.1558/imre.31025
Abstract:
According to William Sims Bainbridge science fiction serves an ideological purpose. In this paper I take this premise and re-frame it in the terms of philosophical phenomenology of Edmund Husserl and Max Scheler to argue that science fiction promotes a “science” ideology. Specifically, it promotes a particular mode of naturalization: making the person “fit” within their life-world. It does this by using the perceived culture war between “science” and “religion” as a framing device to throw the former into sharper contrast. Contra Stephen Hrotic, I argue the changing perceptions of religion in science fiction have not become more tolerant but reflect changes in the “scientific” mode of naturalization. To demonstrate this I will look at two key case studies: James Blish’s A Case of Conscience and Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow.
Author: Jonathan Tuckett
References :
Albrecht, M. 1954. “The Relationship of Literature and Society.” American Journal of Sociology 59(5): 425–436. https://doi.org/10.1086/221388
Asimov, I. 1953. The Caves of Steel. Harper Collins.
——— 1966. Foundation. New York: Avon.
Becker, H. and H. Dahlke. 1942. “Max Scheler’s Sociology of Knowledge.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 2: 310–322. https://doi.org/10.2307/2103163
Berger, P. and T. Luckmann. 1966. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. London: Penguin Books.
Berger, A. 1978. “Science-Fiction Critiques of the American Space Program, 1945–1958.” Science-Fiction Studies 5: 99–109.
Blish, J. 2014. A Case of Conscience. London: Gollancz.
Card, O. S. 1986. Speaker for the Dead. New York: Tor.
Carr, D. 2004. “Husserl’s Problematic Concept of the Life-World.” In Phenomenology Vol.1, edited by by D. Moran and L. Embree, 359–374. London: Routledge.
Clarke, A. C. 1951. Prelude toe Space. New York: World.
———. 1999. Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible. London: Victor Gollancz.
Fitzgerald, T. 1997. “A Critique of Religion as a Cross-Cultural Category.” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 9(2): 91–110. https://doi.org/10.1163/157006897X00070
———. 2000. The Ideology of Religious Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———. 2010. “‘Experiences Deemed Religious’: Radical Critique or Temporary Fix? Strategic Ambiguity in Ann Taves’ Religious Experience Reconsidered.” Religion 40(4): 296–299. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.religion.2010.09.005
Freud, S. 1962. The Future of an Illusion. Translated by W. D. Robson-Scott. London: Hogarth Press.
Goldenberg, N. 2013. “Theorising Religions as Vestigial States in Relation to Gender and Law: Three Cases.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 29(1): 39–52. https://doi.org/10.2979/jfemistudreli.29.1.39
Gurwitsch, A. 1974. Phenomenology and the Theory of Science. Embree, L., trans. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
Heinlein, R. 1974. “Channel Makers.” Analog 92: 166–178.
Hrotic, S. 2014. Religion in Science Fiction. London: Bloomsbury.
Husserl, E. 1965. Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy. Edited by and translated by Q. Lauer. London: Harper Torchbooks.
———. 1970. The Crisis of European Science and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy. Translated by D. Carr. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
———. 1988. Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology. Translated by D. Cairns. London: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
———. 1989. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy second book: Studies in the Phenomenology of Constitution. Rojcewicz, R. and A. Schuwer, trans. London: Kluwer Academic Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2233-4
Kress, N. 2000. Probability Moon. New York: Tom Doherty Associates.
Leiber, F. 1943. “Gather Darkness!.” Astounding Science Fiction 31: 9–50, 109–159, 118–162.
Lewis, M. and T. Staehler. 2010. Phenomenology: An Introduction. London: Routledge.
Martin, L. 2014. Deep History, Secular Theory: Scientific Studies in Religion. Berlin: De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781614515005
Milstead, J. W. et al., eds. 1974. Sociology through Science Fiction. New York: St Martin’s Press.
Moran, Dermot. 2000. Introduction to Phenomenology. London: Routledge.
https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203196632
———. 2012. Husserl’s Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139025935
Panshin, A. 1968. Heinlein in Dimension. Chicago, IL: Advent Publishers.
Redfield, R. 1952. “The Primitive World View.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 96: 30–36.
del Rey, L. 1970. The Eleventh Commandment. New York: Ballantine.
Russell, M.D. 1996. The Sparrow. Margate: Black Swan.
Saler, B. 1977. “Supernatural as a Western Category.” Ethos 5: 31–55. https://doi.org/10.1525/eth.1977.5.1.02a00040
Sawyer, R. 2000. Calculating God. New York: Tor Books.
Scheler, M. 1973. Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values. Translated by M. Frings and R. Funk. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
——— 1980. Problems of a Sociology of Knowledge. Translated by M. Frings. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Schutz, A. 1962. Collected Papers I: The Problem of Social Reality, Natanson, M., trans. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
Sims Bainbridge, W. 1986. Dimensions of Science Fiction. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674734975
———. 2013. eGods: Faith Versus Fantasy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Slone, J., ed. 2006. Religion and Cognition: A Reader. London: Equinox.
Smart, N. 1996. Dimensions of the Sacred. California: University of California Press.
Spiegelberg, H. 1971. The Phenomenological Movement, 2nd edition. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
———. 1982. The Phenomenological Movement: Third revised and enlarged edition. The Hague: Matinus Nijhoff. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-7491-3
Staehler, T. 2008. “Crisis as a Philosophical Beginning: Hegel and Husserl on the Problem of Motivation.” Philosophy Today 52: 15–24. https://doi.org/10.5840/philtoday200852137
Stephenson, N. 2014. Anathem. London: Atlantic Books.
Taves, A. 2009. Religious Experience Reconsidered. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Tuckett, Jonathan. 2014. Review of William Sims Bainbridge, eGods: Faith versus Fantasy in Computer Gaming. Journal of Religion, Media and Digital Culture 3(2).
———. 2015. “The Prejudice of Being Human in the Study of Non-Ordinary Realities,” Diskus 17(2). http://dx.doi.org/10.18792/diskus.v17i2.69.
———. 2016. “Clarifying Phenomenologies in the Study of Religion: separating Kristensen and van der Leeuw from Otto and Eliade.” Religion 46(1): 75–101. https://doi.org/10.1080/0048721X.2015.1057773
———. forthcoming a. “Orthodoxy is not Scientific: A Phenomenological Critique of Naturalism.” In The Role of Methodological Naturalism in Religious Studies, edited by J. Blum. Brill.
———. forthcoming b. “Toward a Proper Phenomenology of Religious Experience.” The Journal of Religious Experience.
Waldenfels, B. 2004. “Homeworld and Alienworld.” In Phenomenology Vol. IV: Expanding Horizons of Phenomenology, edited by D. Moran and L. Embree, 280–291. London: Routledge.
Wciórka, L. 1989. “Phenomenology as the Method of Contemporary Philosophical Anthropology.” In Man Within His Life-World. Edited by
A. T. Tymeniecka. London: Kluwer Academic Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2587-8_32
Wild, J. 2004. “Man and His Life-World.” In Phenomenology Vol.1, edited by D. Moran and L. Embree, xx-xx. London: Routledge.
Williamson, J. 1939. “Vanguard of Science.” Startling Stories 2.
Wilson, G. W. 2012. Alif the Unseen. New York: Grove Press.