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Book: The Western Epistemic Tradition and the Scientific Study of Religion

Chapter: Setting the Boundaries for the Scientific Study of Religious Phenomena

DOI: 10.1558/equinox.44003

Blurb:

The assumption that a scientifically respectable study of ‘religion’ as a field of teaching and research depends on defining ‘religion’ is unhelpful since, as an abstract English noun, the term has no empirical reference range. Limiting ‘Religious Studies’ to the study of modes of human thought and behaviour described as ‘religious,’ by virtue of their association with beliefs in superhuman agent, will ground the field in an intersubjectively observable subject matter.

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