“Boundary Work”
The Religious Faith of Natural Scientists in Poland and Ukraine
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/imre.19568Keywords:
religion, science, boundaries, Poland, Ukraine, semi-structured interviewsAbstract
The article presents the strategies that natural scientists from Central and Eastern Europe undertake to establish the demarcation between science and religion. Based on a 100 semi-structured interviews with physicists and biologists from Poland and Ukraine it demonstrates cultural differences of boundary work undertaken in the two groups. Moreover, the boundary lines between science and religion, knowledge and faith prove to be isomorphic to other boundaries (e.g. between the natural and supernatural, matter and spirit). It demonstrates further how these results can contribute to explaining the lower level of religiousness of scientists in Poland. The data collected point to a general conclusion that the lower level of religiousness of academics observed in international studies may have heterogeneous basis and forms; the impact of science on the religiousness of societies is varied and culturally conditioned.
References
[“Features of religious and church-religious self-determination of Ukrainian citizens: trends 2010-2018.] online: http://razumkov.org.ua/uploads/article/2018_Religiya.pdf.
[Religion and church in Ukrainian society: a sociological study]. 2017. In [Information Materials Prepared for the Regular Meeting of the Round Table “Religion and Government in Ukraine: Problems of Mutuality”].
Abel, Francoisa, Cal Le Gallc and Raul Magni Bertonb. 2016. “Politics, economics, ethics and religion in French academia.” French Politics 14: 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41253-016-0002-9
Alba, Richard. 2006. “Diversity’s Blind Spot. Catholic Ethnics on the Faculties of Elite American Universities.” Ethnicities 6(4): 518–554. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468796806072988
Bakar, Osman. 1999. “The Question of Methodology in Islamic Science.” In The History and Philosophy of Islamic Science, 13–39. Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society.
Baniak, Józef. 2010. “Miedzy ateizmem a pozorna religijnoscia. Polscy katolicy niewierzacy, lecz praktykujacy religijnie. Studium socjologiczne.” In Religijnosc i duchowosc – dawne i nowe formy, edited by M. Libiszowska-Zóltkowska, S. Grotowska, 184–204. Nomos: Kraków.
Barbour, Ian. 2000. “When Science Meets Religion: Enemies, Strangers, or Partners?” New York: HarperCollins.
Bellah, Robert N. 1970. “Religious Evolution.” In Beyond Belief: Essays on Religion in a Post-traditional World, 20–50. New York: Harper & Row.
Bereiter Carl, and Mark Freedman. 1962. “Fields of Study and The People in Them’. In: The American College, edited by N. Sanford, 563–596. New York: Wiley
Boguszewski, Rafal. 2015. “Kanon wiary Polaków” [The Canon of Poles’ Faith]. Komunikat z badan [Research Report] CBOS 29/2015. Warszawa: CBOS
———. 2017. “Przynaleznosc Polaków do ruchów i wspólnot religijnych.” [The affiliation of Poles to movements and religious communities.]Komunikat z badan CBOS 84/2017. Warszawa: CBOS
Borowik, Irena, and Tadeusz Doktór. 2001. Pluralizm religijny i moralny w Polsce. Raport z badan. [Religious and moral pluralism in Poland. Research report]. Kraków: Nomos.
Borowik, Irena. 2005. “Religijne oblicze Polski na tle Europy” [Religious Face of Poland Against the Background of Europe]. In Kultury religijne. Perspektywy socjologiczne [Religious cultures. Sociological perspectives], edited by A. Wójtowicz, 31–43. Warszawa–Tyczyn: PTR.
———. 2007. “The Religious Landscape of Central and Eastern Europe After Communism.” In The Sage Handbook on Sociology of Religion, edited by J.A. Beckford and N.J. Demerath III, 654–669. London: Sage. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781848607965.n32
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984 [1979]. Distinction. London: Routledge.
———. 1988. “Homo academicus.” Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Bourdieu, Pierre and Loic J.D. Wacquant. 1992. An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago.
Bruce, Steve. 2000. Fundamentalism. Cambridge: Polity Press.
———. 2002. God is Dead. Secularization in the West. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
———. 2011. “Secularization.” In Defence of an Unfashionable Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199654123.001.0001
Caplovitz, David and Fred Sherrow. 1977. The Religious Drop-Outs: Apostasy among College Graduates. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications.
Casanova, José. 2008. “Public Religions Revisited.” In Religion: Beyond the Concept, edited by H. de Vries, 101–119. New York: Fordham University Press.
Cetina, Karin Knorr. 2009. Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make Knowledge. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvxw3q7f
Charmaz, Kathy. 2006. Constructing Grounded Theory: A Practical Guide Through Qualitative Analysis. London: Sage
Chopra, Deepak and Leonard Mlodinow. 2011. War of the Worldviews: Where Science and Spirituality Meet and Do Not. New York: Harmony.
Cunningham, Andrew. 1988. “Getting the Game Right: Some Plain Words on the Identity and Invention of Science.” Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science 19: 365–389. https://doi.org/10.1016/0039-3681(88)90005-2
Duluman, Yevgraf, Mykola Zakovich and Mykola Rybachuk. 2000. [Religious Studies, Textbook].
Durkheim, Emile. 1976 [1912]. “The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life.” London: Routledge.
Ecklund, Elaine Howard, and Christopher P. Scheitle. 2007. “Religion Among Academic Scientists. Distinctions, Disciplines, and Demographics.” Social Problems 54(2): 289–307. https://doi.org/10.1525/sp.2007.54.2.289
Ecklund, Elaine Howard, and Jerry Z. Park and Katherine L. Sorell. 2011. “Scientists Negotiate Boundaries Between Religion and Science.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 50(3): 552–569. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5906.2011.01586.x
Ecklund, Elaine Howard, David R. Johnson and Brandon Vaidyanathan. 2019. “Secularity and Science: What Scientists around the World Really Think about Religion.” Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190926755.001.0001
Ecklund, Elaine Howard, David R. Johnson, Christopher P. Scheitle, Kirstin R.W. Matthews and Steven W. Lewis. 2016. “Religion among Scientists in International Context: A New Study of Scientists in Eight Regions.” Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World. Online journal: https://doi.org/10.1177/2378023116664353
Ecklund, Elaine Howard, Jerry Z. Park and Phil Todd Veliz. 2008. “Secularization and Religious Change among Elite Scientists.” Social Forces 86(4): 1805–1839. https://doi.org/10.1353/sof.0.0048
Erenc, Janusz. 2010. “Religijnosc i tolerancja. Stosunek do wiary pracowników naukowych Uniwersytetu Gdanskiego” [Religiousness and Tolerance. Attitude Towards the Faith of Researchers at the University of Gdansk]. Przeglad Religioznawczy [Religious Studies Review] 3(237): 121–142.
Gal, Susan and Judith T. Irvine. 1995. “The Boundaries of Languages and Disciplines: How Ideologies Construct Difference.” Social Research 62(4): 967–1001.
Gavrilova, Natalia. 2010, [Modern Religiosity: What and How the Youth of Ukraine Believes]. Saarbrucken: Lambert Academic Publishing.
Gaziano, Emanuel. 1996. “Ecological Metaphors As Scientific Boundary Work: Innovation and Authority in Interwar Sociology and Biology.” American Journal of Sociology 101(4): 874–907. https://doi.org/10.1086/230783
Gieryn, Thomas F. 1983. “Boundary-work and the Demarcation of Science from non-science: Strains and Interests in Professional Ideologies of Scientists.” American Sociological Review 48: 781–795. https://doi.org/10.2307/2095325
Glaser, Barney G. and Anselm L. Strauss. 2017. “Discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research.” London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203793206
Golab, Andrzej. 2017. “Wiara lub niewiara polskich naukowców w Boga a ich poglady na relacje miedzy nauka a religia” [The Faith or Disbelief of Polish Scientists in God and Their Views on the Relationship Between Science and Religion]. Roczniki Psychologiczne [Annals of Psychology] 20(1): 63–79. https://doi.org/10.18290/rpsych.2017.20.1-3pl
Gould, Stephen Jay. 2002. Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life. New York: Ballantine Books.
Greeley, Andrew. 1964. “Comment on Stark’s On the Incompatibility of Religion and Science.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 3(2): 239–240. https://doi.org/10.2307/1384513
———. 1973. “The ‘Religious Factor’ and Academic Careers: Another Communication.” American Journal of Sociology 78(5): 1247–1255. https://doi.org/10.1086/225430
Gross, Neil, and Ethan Fosse. 2012. “Why are Professors Liberal.” Theory and Society 41(2): 127–168. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-012-9163-y
Hardy, Kenneth R. 1974. “Social Origins of American Scientists and Scholars.” Science 185: 497–506. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.185.4150.497
Hoge, Dean and Larry G. Keeter. 1976. “Determinants of College Teachers’ Religious Beliefs and Participation.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 15: 221–235. https://doi.org/10.2307/1386086
Hull, David. 1988. Science as a Process. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Iqbal, Muzaffar. 2007. Science and Islam. London: Greenwood Publishing Group.
Jodkowski, Kazimierz. 2007. “Konflikt nauka-religia a teoria inteligentnego projektu” [The science-Religion Conflict and the Theory of Intelligent Design]. In Teoria inteligentnego projektu – nowe rozumienie naukowosci? [Intelligent Design Theory - A New Understanding of Science?], edited by K. Jodkowski, 145–180. Warszawa: Megas.
Lamont, Michèle. 2000. The Dignity of Working Men: Morality and the Boundaries of Race, Class, and Immigration. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press/New York: Russell Sage Found.
Lamont, Michèle, and Virág Molnár. 2002. “The Study of Boundaries in the Social Sciences.” Annual Review of Sociology 28(1): 167–195. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.soc.28.110601.141107
Larson, Edward J. and Larry Witham. 1997. “Scientists are Still Keeping the Faith.” Nature 386: 435–436. https://doi.org/10.1038/386435a0
Lehman, Joe and Shriver Wayne. 1968. “Academic Discipline as Predictive of Faculty Religiosity.” Social Forces 47(2): 171–182. https://doi.org/10.2307/2575147
Leuba, James. 1916. The Belief in God and Immortality: A Psychological, Anthropological and Statistical Study. Boston, MA: Sherman, French and Co.
Leuba, James. 1934. “Religious Beliefs of American Scientists.” Harper’s Magazine 169: 291–300.
Libiszowska-Zóltkowska, Maria. 2000. Wiara uczonych [Scholars’ Faith]. Kraków: Nomos.
Lindberg, David C. 1992. The Beginnings of Western Science. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Marianski, Janusz. 2013. Sekularyzacja, desekularyzacja, nowa duchowosc [Secularization, Desecularization, New Spirituality]. Kraków: Nomos.
Martin, David. 1969. The Religious and the Secular: Studies in Secularization. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
———. 1993 [1978]. A General Theory of Secularization. Aldershot: Gregg Revivals.
———. 2008. “Does the Advance of Science Mean Secularization.” Scottish Journal of Theology 61(1): 51–63. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0036930607003833
McMullin, Ernan. 1990. “Conceptions of Science in the Scientific Revolution.” In Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution, edited by D. Lindberg and R. Westman, 27–92. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Morenchuk, Andriy. 2008. [Key vectors of Khrushchev’s anti-church campaign].
Nasr, Seyyed Hossein. 1993. The Need for a Sacred Science: An Intellectual Defence of the Tradition. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Nesteruk, Alexey. 2006. [Logos and space. Theology, science and the Orthodox].
Osler, Margaret J. 1997. “Mixing Metaphors: Science and Religion or Natural Philosophy and Theology in Early Modern Europe.” History of Science 35: 91–113. https://doi.org/10.1177/007327539803600104
Otto, Rudolf. 1958 [1917]. The Idea of the Holy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Parashchevin, Maxim. 2009. [Religion and Religiosity in Ukraine]. Institute of Politics, Institute of Sociology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.
Pew Research Center. 2017. “Religijnosc i przynaleznosc narodowa w Europie Srodkowo-Wschodniej: Przenikanie sie tozsamosci narodowej i religijnej w regionie dawniej zdominowanym przez ateistyczne rezimy,” [Religiousness and Nationality in Central and Eastern Europe: The Interpenetration of National and Religious Identity in a Region Formerly Dominated by Atheistic Regimes]. online: https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2017/05/POL-Overview-FOR-WEB.pdf
Pollack Detlef, and Olaf Müller. 2011. “Religiousness in Central and Eastern Europe. Towards Individualization.” In Religions, Churches and Religiosity in Post-Communist Europe, edited by I. Borowik, 22–36. Kraków: Nomos.
Research and Branding Group. 2016. [Churching of the Orthodox in Ukraine]. http://rb.com.ua/blog/vocerkovlennost-pravoslavnyh-v-ukraine/
Roginska, Maria. 2020. Przyrodnicy o nadprzyrodzonym. Studium porównawcze uczonych z Polski i Ukrainy [Naturalists about the Supernatural: A Comparative Study of Scientists from Poland and Ukraine]. Kraków: Nomos.
———. 2019. “Trajectories of (Non) Belief in the Scientific Community: The Case of Polish and Ukrainian Natural Scientists.” Review of Religious Research 61: 389–409. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13644-019-00386-x
Rossi, Paolo. 1984. The Dark Abyss of Time: The History of the Earth and the History of Nations from Hooke to Vico. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Saliba, George. 2007. Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/3981.001.0001
Scheitle, Christopher P. 2011. “US College Students’ Perception of Religion and Science: Conflict, Collaboration, or Independence. A Research Note.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 50(1): 175–186. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5906.2010.01558.x
Small, Mario L. 1999. “Department Conditions and the Emergence of New Disciplines: Two Cases in the Legitimation of African-American Studies.” Theory and Society 28(5): 659–707. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1007034317576
Smirnov, Mikhail. 2018. [Scientific Atheism in Soviet Higher Education: Periodization And Content]. [Bulletin of the Leningrad State University] (3): 144–172.
Somers, Margaret R. and Gloria D. Gibson. 1994. “Reclaiming the Epistemological ‘Other’: Narrative and the Social Constitution of Identity.” In Social Theory and the Politics of Identity, edited by C. Calhoun, 37–99. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
Stark, Rodney. 1963. “On the Incompatibility of Religion and Science: A Survey of American Graduate Students.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 3(1): 3–20. https://doi.org/10.2307/1385002
———. 1999. “Secularization, RIP.” Sociology of Religion 60(3): 249–273. https://doi.org/10.2307/3711936
Thalheimer, Fred. 1965. “Continuity and Change in Religiosity: A Study of Academicians.” Pacific Sociological Review 8: 101–108. https://doi.org/10.2307/1388476
Tomka, Miklós. 2006. “The Non-Religious.” In Eastern European Religion, edited by E. Révay and M. Tomka, 103–120. Budapest-Piliscaba: Pázmány Társadalomtudomány.
Turner, Frank M. 1974. “Between Science and Religion: The Reaction to Scientific Naturalism in Late Victorian England.” New Haven, CT: Yale University Press
———. 1993a. “Rainfall, Plagues, and the Prince of Wales.” In Contesting Cultural Authority: Essays in Victorian Intellectual Life by Frank M. Turner, 151–170. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511522857.007
———. 1993b. The Victorian Conflict between Science and Religion: A Professional Dimension. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tyrala, Radoslaw. 2014. Bez Boga na co dzien. Socjologia ateizmu i niewiary [Without God Every Day: Sociology of Atheism and Unbelief]. Kraków: Nomos.
Vaughan, Ted R., Douglas H. Smith and Gideon Sjoberg. 1966. “The Religious Orientations of American Natural Scientists.” Social Forces 44: 519–526. https://doi.org/10.2307/2575087
Wilson, Bryan R. 1969. Religion in Secular Society. Baltimore, MD: Penguin.
———. 1998. “The Secularization Thesis. Criticisms and Rebuttals.” In Secularization and Social Integration. Papers in honor of Karel Dobbelaere, edited by R. Laermans, B. Wilson and J. Billiet, 45–66. Leuven: Leuven University.
Wuthnow, Robert. 1985. “Science and the Sacred.” In The Sacred in a Secular Age, edited by P. E. Hammond, 187–203. Berekley: University of California Press. https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520325425-013
Zelan, Joseph. 1968. “Religious Apostasy, Higher Education and Occupational Choice.” Sociology of Education 41(4): 370–379. https://doi.org/10.2307/2112158
