Explaining and Interpreting Religion: Essays on the Issue: 16 (Toronto Studies in Religion) - Hardcover

Segal, Robert A

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0820419141 ISBN 13: 9780820419145

Publisher: Peter Lang Publishing Inc, 1992

Synopsis

This collection of recent essays on the social scientific study of religion makes the fundamental claim that on the one hand social scientists cannot be facilely grouped into «explainers» rather than «interpreters» of religion and that on the other hand scholars of religious studies - religionists - cannot fend off the social scientific challenge by rejecting explanation for interpretation. Not only are the concepts of explanation and interpretation defined differently in different fields, but by most definitions of the terms religionists and social scientists alike both explain and interpret religion. An acute hiatus between religionists and social scientists remains, but it is over how, not whether, religion gets explained and interpreted.

About this title

About the Author

The Author: Robert A. Segal, Professor of Religious Studies at Louisiana State University, is the author of The Poimandres as Myth: Scholarly Theory and Gnostic Meaning, Joseph Campbell: An Introduction, Religion and the Social Sciences: Essays on the Confrontation, and The Gnostic Jung. He has also published many articles in the areas of methodology and theory in the study of religion, theories of myth, and Gnosticism. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University and has taught at Reed College, Stanford University, the University of Toronto, the University of Pittsburgh, and Tulane University.

Edition details

• Publisher: Peter Lang Publishing Inc
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0820419141
• ISBN 13: 9780820419145
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 155