Hi Nort,
Don't worry about intellectual trespassing. We are all guilty. However, one should not be afraid to speak one's own language and toot one's own horn. God talk should not frighten anyone. We are all translators and interpreters, and able to extract whatever meaning we can from speach for ourselves. We all try to make the world ours. It is part of the process or incorporation or embodiment, or making the word flesh as Christians would say, yes? (Now I am crossing into unknown territory!) The difference between the scientific and religious worldview as I see it is one of perspective: the former is outside looking in and the latter is inside looking out. Is there a middle position? I don't know. There are limits to both perspectives. Science tries to understand the world objectively which comes up against our own subjectivity. On the other hand, religion tries to incorporate the world into the subjective realm, which comes up against the limits of our own humanity and understanding. Maybe being in between is what it means to be human, between heaven and earth. I do have plans to visit Boston and would swing by New Haven. I am finalizing them at the moment and will let you know soon.
Tad
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Hi Tad,
Happy New Year! First, apologies for presuming to know what social scientists are thinking and doing these days. I do have an interest in the field and have taken several courses in anthropology and psychology when at university many years ago. However, I do have the bad habit of setting up straw dogs and instead need to stick to my own area of expertise. Nevertheless, having said that I do feel that this cross-disciplinary dialogue is intriguing and to put myself in an other's shoes is not entirely bad. Please correct me when I do over step. The reading in today's service was from Paul's Letter to the Ephesians on adoption. Paul's message is that we are all adopted by God as God's heirs and children. We are all one big family and are all descendants of the First Patriarchs. The Bible is our family history. It is a wonderful way to look at the world and challenges us to be open to everyone around us. We are all kin, brothers and sisters in Christ. One can push this to include all of life and introduce and ecological understanding of family and oneness with God the Creator. Kinship was the great discovery of anthropology and it is a great metaphor for social relationships in general. The religious impulse is to extend this kinship as far and wide as possible; to include the other. There is a lovely passage from Genesis about when Abraham welcomes strangers into his home. The passage opens with the statement that "The Lord appeared to Abraham" and Abraham calls the strangers, "Lord." Strangers can be feared or welcomed. They can be angels and messengers of God. God is present in those chance encounters with the other, present in the gap between strangers. This is one reason why travelling can be so exhilarating. Opposites do attract. God and love is everywhere!
Nort
Happy New Year! First, apologies for presuming to know what social scientists are thinking and doing these days. I do have an interest in the field and have taken several courses in anthropology and psychology when at university many years ago. However, I do have the bad habit of setting up straw dogs and instead need to stick to my own area of expertise. Nevertheless, having said that I do feel that this cross-disciplinary dialogue is intriguing and to put myself in an other's shoes is not entirely bad. Please correct me when I do over step. The reading in today's service was from Paul's Letter to the Ephesians on adoption. Paul's message is that we are all adopted by God as God's heirs and children. We are all one big family and are all descendants of the First Patriarchs. The Bible is our family history. It is a wonderful way to look at the world and challenges us to be open to everyone around us. We are all kin, brothers and sisters in Christ. One can push this to include all of life and introduce and ecological understanding of family and oneness with God the Creator. Kinship was the great discovery of anthropology and it is a great metaphor for social relationships in general. The religious impulse is to extend this kinship as far and wide as possible; to include the other. There is a lovely passage from Genesis about when Abraham welcomes strangers into his home. The passage opens with the statement that "The Lord appeared to Abraham" and Abraham calls the strangers, "Lord." Strangers can be feared or welcomed. They can be angels and messengers of God. God is present in those chance encounters with the other, present in the gap between strangers. This is one reason why travelling can be so exhilarating. Opposites do attract. God and love is everywhere!
Nort
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Hi Nort,
Anthropology does try and make connections between things which it understands as culture. Culture refers to both these connections and the totality of those connections. The totality or sum is greater than the parts in creating an ethos which is intuited on some level by individuals and helps form them. There is a strong emotional component of this ethos which you are right in saying that it goes largely overlooked. However it is not all left on the editing room floor. Any good ethnography is going to describe at some point the emotional life of a people, however we do not as of yet have the theoretical tools to pick up on those clues and make something out of it. Feelings are messy as you say, not something you can pick up with a pair of forceps. It is more like reading the patterns or trails of subatomic particles in a cloud chamber. The first step anthropologists have taken is trying to identify and classify emotions, which is still not an exact science. Anthropologists cannot agree if types of emotions are universal or particular to place and time, that is biological or cultural. The answer is both. The more interesting problem for me is understanding the act of investigation as a dialogical process creating a common emotional field across which people from two cultures can communicate. Anthropology is as much about creating hybrid cultures as it is about describing and analyzing existing cultures. This is my understanding of the social science application of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. All we can really hope to understand is the relationship and that is where trust and feelings come in.
Tad
Anthropology does try and make connections between things which it understands as culture. Culture refers to both these connections and the totality of those connections. The totality or sum is greater than the parts in creating an ethos which is intuited on some level by individuals and helps form them. There is a strong emotional component of this ethos which you are right in saying that it goes largely overlooked. However it is not all left on the editing room floor. Any good ethnography is going to describe at some point the emotional life of a people, however we do not as of yet have the theoretical tools to pick up on those clues and make something out of it. Feelings are messy as you say, not something you can pick up with a pair of forceps. It is more like reading the patterns or trails of subatomic particles in a cloud chamber. The first step anthropologists have taken is trying to identify and classify emotions, which is still not an exact science. Anthropologists cannot agree if types of emotions are universal or particular to place and time, that is biological or cultural. The answer is both. The more interesting problem for me is understanding the act of investigation as a dialogical process creating a common emotional field across which people from two cultures can communicate. Anthropology is as much about creating hybrid cultures as it is about describing and analyzing existing cultures. This is my understanding of the social science application of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. All we can really hope to understand is the relationship and that is where trust and feelings come in.
Tad
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