New Age | Heterodoxology

Why fear the history of science? A brief response to Don Wiebe

I am more used to being labelled a “scientistic reductionist” than an “anti-science relativist”. While neither is particularly accurate, I was certainly surprised to see Don Wiebe review my book, The Problem of Disenchantment, as a “full-scale attack on modern Western science” (p. 1). Ironically, the review (published online in the journal Religion) appears side by side with an article of mine [free postprint here] that argues for consilience between the humanities and the sciences, so readers are likely to walk away a bit puzzled.

Since the charge of anti-science is a serious one, however, and since it comes from a well-respected scholar whose ardent support for a scientific and secular study of religion I have, in fact, admired since my undergraduate days, it seems necessary to take a moment to clarify some crucial issues that appear to get mixed up in the review.

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on October 24, 2015 at 8:18 am Comments (1)
Tags: anti-science, consilience, constructionism, Don Wiebe, emic historiography of science, endoxic principle, Numen, relativism, Religion (journal), The Problem of Disenchantment: Scientific Naturalism and Esoteric Discourse

Gnosis & Alterations of Consciousness: ESSWE Thesis Workshop

Time for Thesis Workshop in Amsterdam: “Gnosis & Alterations of Consciousness”

It’s an odd-numbered year, and it’s spring (sort of, some places). And it’s soon time for a new ESSWE Thesis Workshop in Amsterdam, the third one in the line (after this and this). In years when there is no ESSWE conference, these open workshops designed for MA and PhD candidates who are involved with some independent research and thesis writing in the field of esotericism, are organised in conjunction with the annual ESSWE board meeting. We’ve had one on alchemy in 2010, and one on magic in 2012. This year’s workshop has just been announced: the topic is “Gnosis and Alterations of Consciousness”, the date is May 10 (a Saturday), and the place, as previous years, is Amsterdam. It is also completely free (although you should contact the HHP secretary to book a place – see the official call for details). A great excuse for spending a May weekend in Amsterdam!

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on March 26, 2014 at 6:35 pm Comments (1)
Tags: altered states of consciousness, Ann Taves, astral projection, Birgit Menzel, ESSWE thesis workshop, gnosis, methods, REM Lab, Wouter J. Hanegraaff

New Antiquities (extended deadline for CfP)

Back in September the call for papers for a very interesting workshop was released at the Ancient Esotericism blog (and elsewhere). “New Antiquities: Transformations of the Past in the New Age and Beyond”, put together by Almut-Barbara Renger (Freie Universität Berlin) and my good colleague Dylan Burns (Universität Leipzig), calls attention to the myriad uses and imaginings of antiquity in contemporary religious discourses. A fascinating field that has received quite some attention from religious studies scholars interested in such things as the construction of tradition or mnemohistory. What’s particularly interesting about this workshop is that it aims to mobilize the antiquity specialists as well, who, a bit too often perhaps, have tended to avoid dealing with questions related to such modern “reception history”. It’s also an excellent platform for bridging the studies of ancient and contemporary esotericism.

The deadline for submitting paper proposals has now been extended to January 31. Below follows the description of the workshop, pasted from the extension notice:

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on December 14, 2013 at 12:52 am Comments (1)
Tags: Almut-Barbara Renger, ancient esotericism, antiquity, constrution of tradition, Dylan Burns, mnemohistory, neognosticism, neopaganism, reception history

A cult leader in the (royal) family

Working as a historian of religion/esotericism/”pseudoscience” one often has to deconstruct misleading and sensational tabloid headlines. They could look a bit like the title of this post. Sensationalistic appeal notwithstanding, this time around I assure that the title is entirely appropriate and accurate for the topic.

There are several people that this title could have referred to – one might think of Prince Charles, or perhaps the Dutch Princess Irene, whose abilities to communicate with trees and dolphins bring her closer to the cultic fringe of the environmentalist movement. But as most Norwegian readers may have guessed, it refers to a princess closer to home.

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“2045, Rapture of the Nerds!” A public lecture in Trondheim, Norway

If you’re in Trondheim next week, I am giving a public lecture on some aspects of the transhumanist movement. It’s organized by the excellent club- and lecture initiative Forum Nidarosiae. The lecture will be in Norwegian, but I attach an English translation of title and blurb below:

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on September 3, 2013 at 11:40 am Comments (7)
Tags: apocalypticism, artificial intelligence, Forum Nidarosiae, nanorobots, Ray Kurzweil, space colonization, the Singularity, transhumanism

Relocation

The Greenhouse at night.

This weekend I have relocated to my old home town, Trondheim. In the coming few months I’m going to fill an associate professor position, temporarily, due to a set of complicated circumstances that I’ll not go into here. Having left the Center for History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents in Amsterdam behind, I’ll now be found at the newly restructured Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). My office and all teaching happens at campus Dragvoll, which looks pretty much like a giant greenhouse, in a rural and woodlands area on the outskirts of town. Certainly a change of scenery from Amsterdam’s overcrowded streets!

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on August 4, 2013 at 12:51 pm Comments (1)
Tags: Contemporary Esotericism, cults, disenchantment, Dragvoll, neoshamanism, NTNU, Religious Studies, Scientology, sects, secularisation, UFO-religion

Up for review: Discernment of Spirits, Soviet New Age, and Magic

I’ve received three books for review over the last few weeks, making for a hectic book review phase (I’m not gonna mention the ones I’m already late with). They are three fascinating collections, dealing with very diverse material. Here’s a quick preview.

Angels of Light? (2012)

Clare Copeland and Jan Machielsen’s Angels of Light? (Brill, 2012) is a collection of essays dealing with that delicious problem of Christian theology and practice: how to discern real sanctity from demonic trickery? If an angel appears in all its splendour – whether in a dream, a vision, or in front of your bare eyes – how do you know that it is not the devil masquerading to lure the devout to the dark side? This, in a nutshell, is the problem of discernment. It has had consequences not only on the abstract level of theological philosophizing, but also on the social level. Above all during the tumultuous reformation era, when new reformers led to the emergence of new sects with new creeds, new leaders, and new lines of authority. The devout had to fear not only false angels, but false prophets as well. From the blurb:

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on July 29, 2013 at 9:25 am Leave a Comment
Tags: Agrippa, Angels of Light?, Augustine, Bernd-Christian Otto, Bernice Rosenthal, Birgit Menzel, Blavatsky, Catholicism, Clare Copeland, cognitive theory of magic, Correspondences, cosmism, Defining Magic, discernment, Frazer, Jan Machielsen, Jesper Sørensen, Malinowski, Michael Hagemeister, Michael Stausberg, Plato, Preternature, Protestantism, Reformation, Science Fiction, shamanism, Soviet, The New Age of Russia

Kabbalah and Modernity – more than red strings and pop queens

I have made a habit out of making the pre-print versions of some of my book reviews available here at Heterodoxology. I was recently reminded of one that I had completely forgotten about: a review of the excellent volume Kabbalah and Modernity: Interpretations, Transformations, Adaptations (Brill, 2010). It is edited by three good colleagues of mine (Marco Pasi, Boaz Huss, and Kocku von Stuckrad), and features contributions by many other friends and acquaintances, but hopefully my review is not too biased. Moreover, symptomatic of the extreme delay in academic publishing, I should say that this review was written in 2010, and only appeared in print last year. The review was published in Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft (summer 2012).

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on January 23, 2013 at 1:32 pm Comments (10)
Tags: Abraham David Ezekiel, Adolphe Franck, Andreas Kilcher, anti-Semitism, Blavatsky, Boaz Huss, Dialectic of Enlightenment, Eliphas Lévi, Elliot Wolfson, Eric Jacobson, Erwin Neutzsky-Wulff, Freemasonry in Russia, Fritjof Schuon, Gershom Scholem, Giulio Busi, Hasidism, Jean-Pierre Brach, Johann Georg Hamann, Judaism studies, Kabbalah Center, Knorr von Rosenroth, Kocku von Stuckrad, Konstantin Burmistrov, Madonna, marco Pasi, Max Horkheimer, Menahem Mendel Schneerson, Paul Vulliaud, René Guénon, Romanticism, Sara Møldrup Thejls, Sha’ar ha-Shamayim, Shekhinah, Shoa, Theodor Adorno, Theosophical Society, tikkun, Traditionalism, Wouter J. Hanegraaff, Yehuda Ashlag, Zohar

Scientific delusions, or delusions about science? (Part three: muddled conservations)

In the previous post on Sheldrake’s Science Delusion I discussed the first two dogma, concerning the “mechanical philosophy” and its challenges, and the question of whether matter is conscious. As we saw there, Sheldrake comes out as a sort of modern-day vitalist (even though he claims to be an organicist I think his anti-materialism is actually more radical, placing him in the vitalist camp), and a mild supporter of panpsychism. In the present installment we shall look at the third dogma, where Sheldrake takes on a central conceptions of physics: that the matter and energy of the universe is constant, and subjected to laws of conservation and conversion.

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on January 21, 2013 at 12:05 am Comments (2)
Tags: breatharianism, conservation laws, dark energy, dark matter, inedia, misplaced concreteness, Prahlad Jani, prana, Rupert Sheldrake, thermodynamics

Scientific delusions, or delusions about science? (part two: Mechanism, life, and consciousness)

Do you know the meaning of dogmatic?

In the previous post on Rupert Sheldrake’s Science Delusion, I noted that the overall argument is based on a number of misrepresentations and stereotypes of what “science” is up to. The reader gets the impression of a monolithic structure, big-S-“Science”, now dominated by Ten Dogmas, like commandments cut in stone tablets. The history of science has, of course, been rather more complicated. Several of the dogmas do not even correspond well with the actual theories that are pursued today: at best they represent a pointed caricature, at worst, they build on stereotypes crafted about a century or longer ago, that hardly have any relevance for contemporary scientific practice. Even to the extent that some of the “dogmas” refer to presently widespread theoretical or methodological conventions, holding these to be fixed dogmas obscures the fact that they are the outcome of long and sometimes complicated historical developments, both internal and external to science. In short: that x is a widely held belief does not make x a “dogma”; that y is a commonly recommended way of pursuing a task does not make y a dogmatic procedure.

As promised in the previous post, I will go through the ten dogmas one by one to demonstrate some of these points. In the present one we shall focus on the first two, which have to do with questions about mechanism, vitalism, scientific method, materialism, and the problems of defining “consciousness”. We will visit some historical backgrounds and parallels to Sheldrake’s criticism of science, and test his claim that science has closed certain questions “dogmatically”, by holding them up against the actual historical developments of some of the special sciences. Without further ado, here goes dogma #1:

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