Captive Gods: Religion and the Rise of Social Science (The Terry Lectures Series)
by Kwame Anthony Appiah
26 Members (4.00)
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"Philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah explores how early social scientists developed our modern understandings of society through their theories of religion. The foundations of modern social science were built on the study of religion, the acclaimed thinker Kwame Anthony Appiah argues. Delving into the intellectual currents of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, he investigates how formative thinkers -- notably Edward Burnett Tylor, a?Emile Durkheim, Georg Simmel,and Max Weber -- show more grappled with the concepts of society and religionas interdependent categories. Appiah shows how their efforts to define religion, or evade the task, mark the power and limitations of social thought in ways that persist among theorists today. Religion was not merely an object of study but a framework through which earlysocial scientists established sociology as a discipline. Appiah also examines more recent work in both interpretive sociology and evolutionary and cognitive psychology about the mechanisms through which communities form beliefs and values -- while underscoring the enduring significance of these earlier debates for contemporary social thought. Throughout, he intertwines storytelling, historical analysis, and philosophical reflection to show how our ideas about society andculture have been, and continue to be, forged in dialogue with religious questions."-- show lessTags
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Author Information
56+ Works 4,054 Members
Kwame Anthony Appiah was born in 1954 in London and raised in Ghana. After graduating with a degree in philosophy from Cambridge University, he taught at Yale, Duke, and Cornell universities. He is currently a professor of Philosophy and African American Studies at Harvard University. Appiah has written on such topics as language in Assertion and show more Conditional and For Truth in Semantics, and racial philosophy and identities in Color Conscious and In My Father's House. In addition to his scholarly publications, Appiah is the author of the popular Sir Patrick Scott Series of mysteries. In this series, which includes Avenging Angel and Another Death in Venice, Barrister Patrick Scott uses his intellectual skills to solve murders in a most British fashion. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Classifications
- Genres
- Sociology, Philosophy, Religion & Spirituality, Nonfiction, History
- DDC/MDS
- 200.7109 — Religion Religion Religion Education, research, related topics Education, Curricula
- LCC
- BL41 .A65 — Philosophy, Psychology and Religion Religions. Mythology. Rationalism Religions. Mythology. Rationalism Religion (General)
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 26
- Popularity
- 1,044,960
- Rating
- (4.00)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 3
