Explaining and Interpreting Religion: Essays on the Issue(16 Toronto Studies in Religion)

Table of Contents:
Contents: This book of essays challenges the conventional view that social scientists explain religion and that, by contrast, scholars of religions studies - religionists -interpret it. Both groups turn out to explain and interpret religion alike.OR: This book of essays demonstrates the disparate uses of the terms explanation and interpretation in the study of religion. It then considers the implications of those uses for the reconcilability of a social scientific approach to religion with a religionist one.

About the Author :
The Author: Robert A. Segal, Professor of Religious Studies at Louisiana State University, is the author of The Poimandres as Myth: Scholarly Theory and Gnostic Meaning, Joseph Campbell: An Introduction, Religion and the Social Sciences: Essays on the Confrontation, and The Gnostic Jung. He has also published many articles in the areas of methodology and theory in the study of religion, theories of myth, and Gnosticism. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University and has taught at Reed College, Stanford University, the University of Toronto, the University of Pittsburgh, and Tulane University.

Review :
In this fine collection of essays Robert Segal demonstrates once again his ability both to explicate the interpretive and explanatory intentions of those social scientists thought by scholars in religious studies to be compatible with the latter's interpretive aims and to identify the methodological confusions of scholars in religious studies imprisoned in the hermeneutic hall of mirrors. I attach particular importance to his brilliant essay on meanings and causes because these categories provide the context for the battleground for all scholars engaged in the study of religion. (E. Thomas Lawson, Western Michigan University) In a series of briskly written, no-nonsense studies, Segal leads the reader through a thicket of conceptual and logical problems raised by both classical and contemporary students of religion. Readers will be grateful for the direction Segal provides. (Ivan Strenski, University of California, Santa Barbara) This brilliant book, full of insights capable of further extension, is a must for anyone wanting to come to grips with methodological issues in the study of religion seriously. (Arvind Sharma, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion) Universities with religious studies departments should have this book in their library. (Lorne Dawson, Studies in Religion) Those who wish to find a convenient point of access into the debate over explanation and interpretation in the study of religion will be well served by this volume...These essays break large, programmatic statements down into clear, thorough, and useful arguments. (Tim Murphy, Religious Studies Review)