(((Knowledge Ecology)))

In his latest post Matt Segall writes:

“Whitehead’s style of philosophizing has much to do with his understanding of history. From his perspective, the history of religious experience is a fact about the Cosmos that must be taken up and integrated by speculative philosophy.”

I haven’t dwelled on this aspect of Whitehead’s thinking sufficiently, thanks for bringing it to my attention Matt. I think this is a crucial fact relevant to religious-secular discourses. I can’t see any way that religious experiences or practices can, with any requisite fullness, be explained away by cultural or psychological needs, biologically advantageous structures of belief, sociological or material circumstances, or anthropological studies of religious practices. Of course there are many important insights gained from such studies, and I do not deny the importance of, for example, Feurbach’s, Marx’s, Read the rest of this entry »