Abstract
This paper critically supports the modern evolutionary explanation of religion popularised by David Sloan Wilson, by comparing it with those of his predecessors, namely Emile Durkheim and Thomas Hobbes, and to some biological examples which seem analogous to religions as kinds of superorganisms in their own right. The aim of the paper is to draw out a theoretical pedigree in philosophy and sociology that is reflected down the lines of various other evolutionarily minded contributors on the subject of religion. The general theme is of evolved large-scale cooperative structures. A scholarly concern is as follows: Wilson (Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, And The Nature Of Society, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2002) draws on Durkheim, (The elementary forms of religious life. Free Press, New york, 1912) using Calvinism as an example without mentioning Hobbes (Leviathan, Edited by E. Curley, Cambridge, Hackett, 1651), but it was Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) who used Calvinism as an example of a leviathanesque religious structure—which is not acknowledged by either Wilson or Durkheim. If there are even any similarities between these authors, there appears to be an omission somewhere which should rightly be accounted for by giving credit to Hobbes where it is due. I issue on conclusion, what it is that makes Wilson’s approach radically different to that it skates on. I also issue it with a cautionary word.
Highlights
Religion and science, to those paying attention to the science versus religion debate, have often been seen at loggerheads
I (1) outline Wilsons position on religion before (2) going on argue that, for all its apparent modernity, it is rooted in as far back as Plato’s Republic, in particular Hobbes’s Leviathan (1651), and, Emile Durkheim’s, Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912)
A scholarly concern should follow from the fact that Wilson draws on Durkheim using Calvinism as an example without mentioning Hobbes—but it was Hobbes who drew on Calvinism as an example of a leviathanesque religious structure
Summary
To those paying attention to the science versus religion debate, have often been seen at loggerheads. This paper aims, in that same zeitgeist, to present some of the thinking behind the organismal view of religions as naturally evolved phenomena, but in the context of a pedigree of intuitions from philosophy and the social sciences. This paper should not be read as a belated discussion of Wilson (2002), rather, as a belated acknowledgement of Thomas Hobbes’s thought in the history of ideas about the structural mechanisms that support human social arrangements. I (1) outline Wilsons position on religion before (2) going on argue that, for all its apparent modernity, it is rooted in as far back as Plato’s Republic, in particular Hobbes’s Leviathan (1651), and, Emile Durkheim’s, Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912). In conclusion (4) I argue that though it is fruitful to consider religions in much the same way as the biological entities I mention, the view that religion is adaptive deserves both credit to some previously unacknowledged thinkers, and caution before swallowing it hook, line, and sinker
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