A Hydra-Logical Approach: Acknowledging Complexity in the Study of Religion, Science, and Technology

Scholarship has grown increasingly nuanced in its grappling with the intersections of religion, science, and technology but requires a new paradigm. Contemporary approaches to specific technologies reveal a wide variety of perspectives but remain too often committed to typological classification. To...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Geraci, Robert M. (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Wiley-Blackwell [2020]
In: Zygon
Year: 2020, Volume: 55, Issue: 4, Pages: 948-970
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B Religion / Natural sciences / Science of Religion
IxTheo Classification:AA Study of religion
AB Philosophy of religion; criticism of religion; atheism
CF Christianity and Science
Further subjects:B Religion and science
B Artificial Intelligence
B Classification
B Method
B Typology
B Ian Barbour
B climate science
Online Access: Volltext (Verlag)
Volltext (doi)
Description
Summary:Scholarship has grown increasingly nuanced in its grappling with the intersections of religion, science, and technology but requires a new paradigm. Contemporary approaches to specific technologies reveal a wide variety of perspectives but remain too often committed to typological classification. To be vigilant of our obligation to understand and reveal, scholars in the study of religion, science, and technology can adopt a hydra-logical stance: we can recognize that there are cultural monsters possessing scientific, technological, and religious heads. These heads may work with a common agenda or they might not. They might disagree, pulling their shared body back and forth in a public commotion that lays waste to their surroundings. They might see past one another or move in tandem—purposively or not. Evaluations of climate response and AI benefit from seeing how the various heads are inseparable: indeed, cutting one off simply promotes the growth of new heads. Methodological and analytical clarity, therefore, emerges in the transition from schemes of classification to the recognition of hydras.
ISSN:1467-9744
Contains:Enthalten in: Zygon
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1111/zygo.12650