{"title":"The Enchantment of Science: Aesthetics and Spirituality in Scientific Work","authors":"Benedetta Nicoli, Stefano Sbalchiero, Brandon Vaidyanathan","doi":"10.1093/socrel/srae010","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"\n Scientists have long been depicted as mainly rational, bereft of emotional and personal commitments, and disenchanted. Such a view assumes the practice of science as sterile and inoculated from aesthetic and spiritual experiences. This article questions such assumptions by investigating how scientists experience beauty, wonder, and awe in their work as a source of enchantment—a sense of awe and wonder that connects the human being to one or more objects or agents beyond the self that are perceived as having intrinsic meaning. Analyses are based on 205 in-depth interviews with biologists and physicists from India, Italy, the UK, and the USA. Building on the works of Peter Berger and Charles Taylor, we develop a theoretical framework of enchantment, which we use to illustrate the different ways science is compatible with an “enchanted” worldview, even when scientists do not explicitly talk about religion. We also contribute a new typology of three modes of enchantment—transcendent, immanent, and liminal—that enriches the sociological understanding of the relationship between science and religion.","PeriodicalId":47440,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Religion","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.4000,"publicationDate":"2024-06-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Sociology of Religion","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1093/socrel/srae010","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"RELIGION","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Scientists have long been depicted as mainly rational, bereft of emotional and personal commitments, and disenchanted. Such a view assumes the practice of science as sterile and inoculated from aesthetic and spiritual experiences. This article questions such assumptions by investigating how scientists experience beauty, wonder, and awe in their work as a source of enchantment—a sense of awe and wonder that connects the human being to one or more objects or agents beyond the self that are perceived as having intrinsic meaning. Analyses are based on 205 in-depth interviews with biologists and physicists from India, Italy, the UK, and the USA. Building on the works of Peter Berger and Charles Taylor, we develop a theoretical framework of enchantment, which we use to illustrate the different ways science is compatible with an “enchanted” worldview, even when scientists do not explicitly talk about religion. We also contribute a new typology of three modes of enchantment—transcendent, immanent, and liminal—that enriches the sociological understanding of the relationship between science and religion.
期刊介绍:
Sociology of Religion, the official journal of the Association for the Sociology of Religion, is published quarterly for the purpose of advancing scholarship in the sociological study of religion. The journal publishes original (not previously published) work of exceptional quality and interest without regard to substantive focus, theoretical orientation, or methodological approach. Although theoretically ambitious, empirically grounded articles are the core of what we publish, we also welcome agenda setting essays, comments on previously published works, critical reflections on the research act, and interventions into substantive areas or theoretical debates intended to push the field ahead. Sociology of Religion has published work by renowned scholars from Nancy Ammerman to Robert Wuthnow. Robert Bellah, Niklas Luhmann, Talcott Parsons, and Pitirim Sorokin all published in the pages of this journal. More recently, articles published in Sociology of Religion have won the ASA Religion Section’s Distinguished Article Award (Rhys Williams in 2000) and the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion’s Distinguished Article Award (Matthew Lawson in 2000 and Fred Kniss in 1998). Building on this legacy, Sociology of Religion aspires to be the premier English-language publication for sociological scholarship on religion and an essential source for agenda-setting work in the field.