Kategoria BISAC: Religion >> Religion & Science

Why is our world comprehensible? This question seems so trivial that few people have dared to ask it. In this book we explore the deep roots of the mystery of rationality. The inquiry into the rationality of the world began over two-and-a-half-thousand years ago, when a few courageous people tried to understand the world with the help of reason alone, rejecting the comforting fabric of myth and legend.

After many philosophical and theological adventures the Greek concept of rationality laid the foundations of a revolutionary way of thinking: the scientific method, which transformed...

For years Alfred Russel Wallace was little more than an obscure adjunct to Charles Darwin s theory of evolution. Remembered only for prompting Darwin to write "On the Origin of Species "in 1859 by writing his own letter proposing a theory of natural selection, Wallace was rightly dubbed by one biographer the forgotten naturalist. In 1998 Sahotra Sarkar bemoaned Wallace s lapse into obscurity, noting that "at least in the 19th century literature, the theory of evolution was usually referred to as the Darwin and Wallace theory . In the 20th century, the theory of evolution has become...

This is the first book-length critical analysis in any language of Hans Blumenberg's theory of myth. Blumenberg can be regarded as the most important German theorist of myth of the second half of the twentieth century, and his　Work on Myth　(1979) has resonated across disciplines ranging from literary theory, via philosophy, religious studies and anthropology, to the history and philosophy of science.

Nicholls introduces Anglophone readers to Blumenberg's biography and to his philosophical contexts. He elucidates Blumenberg's theory of myth by relating...

The essence of religion was once widely thought to be a unique form of experience that could not be explained in neurological, psychological, or sociological terms. In recent decades scholars have questioned the privileging of the idea of religious experience in the study of religion, an approach that effectively isolated the study of religion from the social and natural sciences. Religious Experience Reconsidered lays out a framework for research into religious phenomena that reclaims experience as a central concept while bridging the divide between religious studies and the...