In my early days as an undergraduate at Washington University in St. Louis, my professor handed back a paper of mine with good marks and a few notes to grow on, including an aggressive-looking circle around the word “religion” and the questions, “What do you mean by this? How do you define your terms?” Quite honestly, I was confused. What do I mean?! Doesn’t she know what it means? Of course, she does. So what’s the issue? I had not yet been inducted into the academic game of words. More papers, different professors, more circling of terms: “modern,” “science,” “spirituality.” These circles, in turn, were circling in on something that was obviously important but never quite explained. And that, I discovered over time, is the importance set on following the scholarly formula (particularly in the humanities) for writing: open with a recognition of the problem of definition, offer one anyway, acknowledge the issue is insurmountable, and move on with one’s argument. I didn’t like it then, and I continue to dislike it now.
Work following this formula lies on a self-made bedrock of precarity, waiting to tumble down as soon as someone answers that ever-present problem of definition. If definition is so fundamental, why move forward at all until we get our footing right? Further, disputing certain definitions while ignoring others doesn’t add up. And the ubiquity of the issue diminishes its power, in a sense, since, being pervasive, it impacts all research equally, making it an unproductive, ineffective – and thus irrelevant – argument. What good can come from muddling every term we use? And I do mean “muddle.” As I discuss later, adding new definitions to analytical terms expands discursive connections, thereby actually further complicating the meaning of words. My aversion to getting sucked into the definition debate continued.
But then something changed. I became interested in a topic of which the definitions involved are carefully policed by academics to make sure no one crosses the line between objectivity and subjectivity: religion and science. On the side of religion, the blasphemous beast, you better damned well not show an inkling of advocacy or be dismissed as a kook. And on the side of science, the sacred cow, you better damned well not show an inkling of critique or – you guessed it – be dismissed as a kook. It is not my goal to critique or advocate for religion or science or particular relationships between them other than a productive one. I advocate for transparency – especially in terms of clarity in our own minds – of knowledge formation, which has been strongly influenced by religion and science. And the scholarship on religion and science, in turn, has been strongly influenced by definitions. For example, in my study of Buddhism and neuroscience for my first master’s thesis, it became exceedingly clear that what “religion” and “science” meant historically in this context was changing, branching out and even intersecting in ways that did not follow a strict separation of terms. It’s messy, and it ruffles feathers. But whether it ought to be that way isn’t the point. It is a historical fact that it did happen, that it does happen. And to be taken seriously when discussing such things that could be seen as advocacy and critique in all the wrong places, I had to explain what was going on there – that it was not a matter of my subjective opinion or favor toward particular views but a matter of words, or, more to the point, of discourse.
I decided to offer my own definitions after all, but, I contemplated, What should they be? I’m coming from the perspective that words and their meanings are products of discourse, constructed via social and historical forces, but also of cognitive processes. So in order to provide analytically valuable and accurate definitions, I have to probe the questions of how discourse is born and how it evolves beginning with the mind itself. In other words, what are the underlying structures that allow and direct discursive generation and change? This cannot be answered by past observations of discourse formed through the infrastructure of communication, behavior, and materializations, as we’ve seen in discourse analysis, because I am not asking the question of what such dispositives are but rather how they are functional to begin with, why a given infrastructure is operative, why we have taken the road down certain strands of discourse and created connections here but not there. I want to break through the surface of the discursive being to see the becoming. And I believe this fundamentally lies in how we form and transform concepts at a cognitive level, which I suggest occurs through a process of relationalization – a perception of meaning contingent on biperspectival viewing by putting objects of knowledge in relative perspective.
I came to this analytical lens through my study of religion and science while pondering new ways of understanding their relationships and their defini- tions. When we are debating what the religion-science relationship is, the focus is on what is meant by “religion” and what is meant by “science” with little to no critical reflection on what we mean by “relationship” or the role that plays in defining the terms in question. So, to answer my central question of the mechanism of discursive generation and change, I started by analyzing the role of relations in the evolution of the terms “religion” and “science” through a methodology that I would later term “relationality analysis.” Ultimately, what I found is the mode of discursive construction is relational. The relational structure of discourse means that relations are what make particular dispositives – including definitions – operative, and relations are what make discourse form and allow certain changes while precluding others. This selective process means that discourse is not just dynamic – a chaotic, arbitrary evolution of terms, as some argue – but structured as well. All these points unfold throughout this work. But further to the point here, these observations of the coexistence of dynamism and structure are indicative of deficiencies in the postmodern worldview, advancing us beyond its challenges to the reliability and operationalization of knowledge positioned in the debates with modernism on foundationalism versus antifoundationalism, structuralism versus deconstructionism, objectivity versus relativism, and essentialism versus contextualism. This will be discussed in detail in the conclusion, but what is important to note here is that the presence of structure suggests, more concretely, definitions can be remarkably accurate, and thus productive and effective, if taken in the correct light. At the same time, the presence of dynamism in discourse is indicative of our participatory role as discursive producers; however, contrary to dreary deconstructionism, this is not the end of knowledge but the liberation of it. There is reliability to knowledge, giving us sturdy building blocks, but we are the builders, and we determine the layout. Let us take ownership, take responsibility, and reinsert the individual’s vision and voice in scholarship with full transparency.
Asserting the relational nature of discourse is a massive claim that will take massive evidence (as such, readers might find some data a bit repetitive; however, a lot of examples are required to establish a discourse as operative in society). The case of religion and science make up that evidence in this volume – appropriate considering they are two major knowledge systems that have guided our philosophies, reaching far beyond the limits of their institutions. Philosophy is central to human thought, whether or not it is critically reflected upon: it underlies every utterance, whether a joke, a vulgar remark, or even nonsense. All speech and materializations of speech both embody and construct how we see the world and how we understand comprehensibility and the processes of communicating meaning. Religion and science, then, are ubiquitous, though not always apparent.
As such, religion and science constitute the subtopic of this work, and this is a considerable field of its own. To do justice to all the topics, themes, and historical time periods I touch upon in this book requires a level of knowledge to which I make no pretensions. Instead of focusing on all movements that were instrumental in the construction of the religion-science relationship – which is outside the scope of a single book anyway – I try to focus on the relations that are particularly salient across the case studies; I use the term “relation,” as distinct from “relationship,” to refer to a qualifying aspect that gives two or more things meaning relative to one another.
The volatility of the religion-science relationship makes it difficult to say which case studies will remain important within the field. The persons, topics, and texts utilized in my case studies, as well as the historical accounts, were primarily chosen for their exhibition of specific relations that have displayed endurance over the years, not to suggest that the cases are ultimately influential. In other words, it is not the specific cases that are of central interest so much as the wider perspective – the relation – they exemplify. The case studies were also arrived at by cross-referencing specialized literature in the academic field of religion and science, especially the “classic” authors, including John William Draper, Ian Barbour, John Hedley Brooke, and others, as well as regular readings of internet news to feel the current pulse of the religion-science scene. But the source material does not necessarily hold a privileged place, as the lack of consensus on the religion-science relationship makes this impossible. As such, I have surveyed a large set of texts to serve as the core material for each case study, as a glance at my bibliography shows (which includes not only sources cited but many of those consulted as well to demonstrate the depth of the analysis).
It is important to note that the relations analyzed in each case study certainly do not exhaust the multitude of ways religion and science are put in relative perspective even within the given context. Put differently, the relations are examples of the case studies as much as the case studies are examples of the relations. For instance, “quantum mysticism” is not always constructed in terms of a nonreductive similarity of religion and science, which is the relation I discuss. This depiction will get some immediately up in arms. This is because quantum mysticism is often constructed as mutually exclusive with science. But I use a different case study to explore the relation of mutual exclusivity. The views presented in each case study chapter should not be taken as ultimate answers but as objects of inquiry because the case studies are not reductively one relation or another. In quantum mysticism alone, there are many religion-science relations utilized in the discourse. Understanding the volatile and diverse nature of the positions provides insight into the limits and potentials of our analyses. From a discursive perspective, it would be nonsense to argue that quantum mysticism is only reductively religious just as it would be nonsense to suggest it is only understood as depicting religion-science similarity. The truth of the matter is that all these relations exist in the discourse, meaning that even in a very specific context, there are multiple answers to the question of what the religion-science relationship is.
This nontypology is a reflection of relationality analysis, as I’m attempting to shift our focus away from the concept as a reified – or even a categorical – thing and examine the ways in which relations give rise to novel, multifarious – even contradictory – ideas applied to one single term. The relational act produces the entities, not the other way around. What “quantum mysticism” is in one instance or another depends on the relation applied as well as what constitutes the relational “other.” There will be no perfect case of any relational construct, no true exemplar. Whether a given case is regarded as “science” or “religion” or both will depend not on the concept or term employed (like “quantum mysticism”) but on the relation utilized (mutual exclusivity or comparability, for instance, which leads to differing notions – and different definitions – of “religion” and “science”). And this is the very specific context for each case study: the relational construct. That is why I have very limited references to any exceptions, variations, alternative contexts, etc. in a given case study chapter. The alternatives are covered by the other relational constructs, in the other case study chapters, rounding out the analysis. As such, the case studies should be read in light of the other relational constructs discussed here, which demonstrate contending histories, struggles over legitimizing knowledge, a complexity of religion-science relations, and – above all – that the relations produce the definitions, produce the discourse, produce the entities of “religion” and “science.” Furthermore, the case studies should be read in light of the overall relational analysis proposed here, which constitutes a methodology to account for all variations without delineating every possible one, which will be discussed further.
Different case studies could have been selected as well, but I don’t think it is worth justifying why I have not included every possibility, which is an impossible task anyway. The case studies were chosen in part to stick to my area of expertise. On the side of religion, that includes the philosophy of religion, East Asian religions, and Asian religions in the West. On the side of science, that includes the philosophy of science, cognitive science, and physics. I also chose case studies that seemed to me to be understudied or undervalued. Quantum mysticism and the religions of science are cases in point. Finally, the case studies are particularly effective choices because they show a continuity even as the perspectives of the religion-science relationship changed throughout history. This is because the relational content as well as the histories of the case studies overlap, with prior relational constructs informing subsequent ones – a connection that evidences the relational structure of discourse, as will be discussed.
This book could be read narrowly as theory and method in comparative religion or, even narrower still, as a collection of case studies depicting the history of how religion-science relationships have evolved, tracking changes from when religion and science were first put in relative perspective to our contemporary age. This reading works because this is also a book about how religion and science are understood in practice – practice by religious advocates, by scientists, by academics from various backgrounds, by specialists, and by otherwise everyday people. I am attempting to connect theory with practice in such a way so that each can inform the other. More specifically, I am attempting to connect how we theorize and conceptualize with the practice of communication via discourses in specific social, cultural, and historical contexts. This connection between theory and practice is the best way to understand how we reify concepts, which is inherently an abstract-to-practical relational process anyway.
Despite the potential for this narrow reading, I hope that this work will, in part, also be read as a new foundation for the structure of subjects of inquiry. “Subjects” can be thought of anew as relational networks of meaning that cut across disciplinary lines, though in a more nuanced way than has previously been proposed. For example, the “religion” of “religion and science” is here considered a different entity than the “religion” of “religion and secularism,” thereby necessitating a shift in how we view academic fields, like religious studies. This is because concepts, I argue thoroughly, are relational – that is, strictly other referential. The only structure I offer is what I believe to be the very basis of knowledge: relationalization. I suggest a way to analyze relationships and use relations for analysis and thus depart from how we think relationally to analyze what we think of words and their definitions, which are essentially words’ relationships to other words. My proffered relationality analysis makes it quite clear that the “how” actually creates the object, and in tackling the meanings of “religion” and “science” prior to the relationship, we have put the cart before the horse. First, we need to know how we create the objects before we can analyze them. And indeed, such an approach seems to suggest that the only enduring way we can analyze them is by examining those constructive processes themselves.
In this way, I am mainly contributing a theory and method in the academic treatment of concepts and their definitions by demonstrating the relational structure of discourse. My approach looks at the foundational issue of how concepts take shape in general and how the process of relationalization leads to the particulars for a concept in a given context. What is the structure of discursive generation and change? The answer unfolds in an intricate tale of two of the most contested, most loved, and most hated words in the English language: “religion” and “science.”