Individualism in the axial age?

Click for an awesome book symposium
at The Immanent Frame blog

Two years ago, when I started reading more "hardcore" academy nerd literature (especially philosophical writing about secularity), I was gifted to find a wonderful online resource, perfect for an almost-digital-native such as myself: The Immanent Frame blog. One of the features of this blog is that they consistently have a significant work of scholarly literature being discussed in an interdisciplinary book symposium. In fact, that was how the blog was born in 2007, with the release of philosopher Charles Taylor's A Secular Age. Most recently they have been posting responses, praises, and questions related to sociologist Robert Bellah's landmark book, Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age. I've been reading all these posts with great interest, since there is little chance I'll read the book itself, which sits at a hefty 784 pages.

The most recent post comes from historian of religions, Wendy Doniger: Axial axioms, where she brings her specialty on religious history in India to bear on Bellah's work. In an otherwise fascinating post, I was struck by her following statement:

The new religious movements of the axial age [sometime between 600 and 400 BCE; this includes biblical Israel, see below] located the problem of the human condition, of human suffering, within the individual heart and mind (where Freud, too, located it), rather than in a hierarchical society (where Marx located it). In this way, at least, these movements were individualistic — “Look to your own house”... — rather than socially oriented... This in itself was a tremendous innovation. (Emphasis mine.)

What follows is my amateurish rejoinder...

Unmasking politics in the Science Guild

My last post contained a sizable (for the web) theological academic paper, in which I quote James Davison Hunter who says that “politics has become a 'social imaginary' that defines the horizon of understanding and the parameters for action” and “is the way in which social life and its problems are imagined and it provides the framework for how Christians envision solutions to those problems” (To Change the World, 168). Both Hunter and I are writing within and for the Church.

Perhaps a helpful comparison could be drawn to other disciplined community traditions, say, the hard sciences. Daniel Sarewitz has an article up on Slate that piqued my interest in this regard: Lab Politics: Most scientists in this country are Democrats. That's a problem. Here's the final paragraph:

...there is clearly something going on that is as yet barely acknowledged, let alone understood. As a first step, leaders of the scientific community should be willing to investigate and discuss the issue. They will, of course, be loath to do so because it threatens their most cherished myths of a pure science insulated from dirty partisanship. In lieu of any real effort to understand and grapple with the politics of science, we can expect calls for more "science literacy" as public confidence begins to wane. But the issue here is legitimacy, not literacy. A democratic society needs Republican scientists.

Similar dynamics are going on in the Church in America, which Hunter explores in-depth. How's this for a revision for comparison?

...leaders of the [Church in America] should be willing to investigate and discuss the issue [of partisan politics shaping the imaginations of Christians]. They will, of course, be loath to do so because it threatens their most cherished myths of a pure [religion] insulated from dirty partisanship. In lieu any real effort to understand and grapple with the politics of [Jesus], we can expect calls for more ["Christian literacy"] as public confidence [in the Church] begins to wane. But the issue here is legitimacy, not literacy.

Is the scientific community in America at risk of becoming marginalized in the imaginations of the broad public, as the Church has over the past century? Is this necessarily a bad thing? For the Church, the Anabaptist critique of Constantinianism says "No," this is actually an opportunity. Could it be an opportunity for the hard sciences to become more self-reflective about their Enlightenment philosophical sacred cows, thereby becoming less beholden to American-political discourse?

How might this interdisciplinary/interfaith discussion be carried out?