Wild Experiment

Feeling Science and Secularism After Darwin

By: Donovan O. Schaefer

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Paperback | 10 June 2022

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326 Pages

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15.2 x 23.0 x 2.6

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In Wild Experiment, Donovan O. Schaefer challenges the conventional wisdom that feeling and thinking are separate. Drawing on science studies, philosophy, affect theory, secularism studies, psychology, and contemporary literary criticism, Schaefer reconceptualizes rationality as defined by affective processes at every level. He introduces the model of "cogency theory" to reconsider the relationship between evolutionary biology and secularism, examining mid-nineteenth-century Darwinian controversies, the 1925 Scopes Trial, and the New Atheist movement of the 2000s. Along the way, Schaefer reappraises a range of related issues, from secular architecture at Oxford to American eugenics to contemporary climate denialism. These case studies locate the intersection of thinking and feeling in the way scientific rationality balances excited discovery with anxious scrutiny, in the fascination of conspiracy theories, and in how racist feelings assume the mantle of rational objectivity. The fact that cognition is felt, Schaefer demonstrates, is both why science succeeds and why it fails. He concludes that science, secularism, atheism, and reason itself are not separate from feeling but comprehensively defined by it.

Industry Reviews

"Inaugurate[s] a project of secular theorization that adds a distinctive and needed methodological angle to studies of the secular in North America. . . . A must-read for scholars of American religions. . . ." -- Valeria Vergani * American Religion *
"Wild Experiment is an indispensable addition to any course syllabus on race, religion, affect theory, and any interdisciplinary topic on the intersections between feeling and thinking." -- Abdulrahman Bindamnan * Material Religion *
"Through Schaefer's endeavor to expand the conversation between secularism studies and STS, the field of STS has an illuminating new vantage from which to look at knowledge, feeling, and belief. And it feels right." * Society for the Social Studies of Science Ludwik Fleck Prize Committee *
"This fascinating book is a valuable contribution to the field of affect studies and secularism studies, as it starts a first conversation between these previously somewhat unconnected fields." -- Nur Yasemin Ural * Politics, Religion & Ideology *
"Perhaps humanities scholars such as Schaefer can be useful in the climate crisis. They can help scientists pay attention to how knowledge feels-and thus how to be more effective in communicating it." -- Amy Frykholm * Christian Century *
"Wild Experiment is a very well-written book that sheds a new light on how to perceive science. It provides good grounds for rejecting naive arguments about objective and value-free knowledge in science." -- Kostas Kampourakis * Quarterly Review of Biology *

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