The psychology of religion: an empirical study of the growth of religious consciousness
"In 1890 I read a paper before the Indiana College Association, which was the first crystallisation of vague ideas which had been forming, that religion might be studied in the more careful ways we call scientific, with profit to both science and religion. This was elaborated still further, on...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Book |
| Language: | English |
| Subito Delivery Service: | Order now. |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
London
Walter Scott Pub. Co
1901
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| In: | Year: 2012 |
| Series/Journal: | Contemporary science series
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| Further subjects: | B
Adolescence
B Religion and Psychology B Adolescent B Psychology, Religious B Conversion |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) |
| Summary: | "In 1890 I read a paper before the Indiana College Association, which was the first crystallisation of vague ideas which had been forming, that religion might be studied in the more careful ways we call scientific, with profit to both science and religion. This was elaborated still further, on the basis of empirical data, in two lectures, in 1894 and 1895, before the Harvard Religious Union. These were expanded later into two articles in the American Journal of Psychology--the first, "A Study of Conversion," in January, 1897; and the other, "Some Aspects of Religious Growth," in October, 1897. The interest shown in the articles, and the fact that the subject has since then been steadily growing, seem to warrant the presentation of the results in a more permanent and generally accessible form. It has been Dr Starbuck's express aim to disengage the general from the specific and local in his critical discussion, and to reduce the reports to their most universal psychological value. It seems to me that here the statistical method has held its own, and that its percentages and averages have proved to possess genuine significance. Dr Starbuck's conclusion, for example, that 'conversion' is not a unique experience, but has its correspondences in the common events of moral and religious development, emerges from the general parallelism of ages, sexes, and symptoms shown by statistical comparison of different types of personal evolution, in some of which conversion, technically so called, was present, whilst it was absent in others. Such statistical arguments are not mathematical proofs, but they support presumptions and establish probabilities, and in spite of the lack of precision in many of their data, they yield results not to be got at in any less clumsy way. Rightly interpreted, the whole tendency of Dr. Starbuck's patient labour is to bring compromise and conciliation into the long standing feud of Science and Religion. The book groups together a mass of hitherto unpublished facts, forming a most interesting contribution both to individual and to collective psychology. They interpret these facts with rare discriminatingness and liberality--broad-mindedness being indeed their most striking characteristic. They explain two extremes of opinion to each other in so sympathetic a way that, although either may think the last word has yet to be said, neither will be left with that sense of irremediable misunderstanding which is so common after disputes between scientific and religious persons. And, finally, they draw sagacious educational inferences"--Preface. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
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| Item Description: | Electronic reproduction; Washington, D.C; American Psychological Association; 2012; Available via World Wide Web; Access limited by licensing agreement; s2012 dcunns |