Kocku von Stuckrad

The Paradox of Nature: Religion, Metaphysics, and the Emergence of the Modern Sciences

The relation between the natural sciences and religion has been the object of much scholarly discussion. Often, it is argued that the emergence of the modern natural sciences is the result of an emancipation of science from religion, a process that started with the scientific revolution and that was reinforced in the Enlightenment period. Critics have noted that the relation between the natural sciences and religion is much more nuanced than this simple interpretation suggests. However, it is by no means clear how this relation can be explained in a way that reflects all these nuances.

This project aims at providing an interpretational framework and tentative answers to the questions involved in this discussion. The point of departure is the observation that the emergence of the modern natural sciences is characterized by a two-fold process. On the one hand, we see what I have called a process of disjunction in Western knowledge of nature: since the eighteenth century, astrology has been fully separated from astronomy, alchemy from chemistry, or philosophy of nature from the natural sciences. On the other hand, we see that religious and metaphysical interpretations of nature have been moved into the scientific sphere: speculations about the ‘living power of nature’ were part and parcel of Enlightenment science and particularly of Romantic responses to it; Darwinism could easily merge with veneration of nature at the end of the nineteenth century; the Pythagorean and kabbalistic idea that the basic components of nature are numbers and letters entered the metaphorical arsenal of the modern life sciences that speak in terms of coding, decoding, recoding, and ultimately of creation of life in a religious framework of meaning.

These are examples that indicate a transformation of the religious field since the eighteenth century. Studying such dynamic processes enables us to think beyond the secularization paradigm and to reconstruct the genealogy of modern natural sciences in close connection with, rather than simple antagonism to, the religious field.

The project runs from 2009 through 2014 and will result in a number of articles and a monograph.
 

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Discursive Transfers: Locations of Knowledge in Medieval and Early Modern Europe

This project takes up recent discussions about religious pluralism and the nature of European history of religion. Using a discursive methodological approach, the project focuses on interferences and common themes among different religious traditions in the medieval and early modern periods. Esotericism is a particularly good example of the transfers of knowledge and semantics between different religions and from one cultural system to another. Often, these transfers are strong elements of active differentiation, polemics, and identity formation, being an indication of a ‘hot’ pluralistic situation.

One aim of this project is to show the importance of Jewish, Muslim, and ‘Pagan’ traditions for the shaping of early modern esotericism. From the thirteenth through the eighteenth centuries these religions were actively involved in cultural processes. The analysis of influential discourses leads to a better understanding of the interferences between and the common interests of different religious groups. One such concept is ‘apocalypticism,’ because the charging of history with meaning and the subsequent application of astrology is of paramount importance for Christian, Jewish, and Muslim discourses alike. Another concept is ‘tradition,’ being a rhetoric device to construct superior historical narratives and religious identities on a pluralistic field of discourse.

This project—from 2003 through 2009—has resulted in several articles and a monograph: Locations of Knowledge in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Esoteric Discourse and Western Identities (Brill's Studies in Intellectual History, vol. 186), Leiden & Boston: Brill 2010.

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