Description
Book SynopsisExamining the reception of evolutionary biology, the 1925 Scopes Trial, and the New Atheist movement of the 2000s, Donovan O. Schaefer theorizes the relationship between thinking and feeling by challenging the conventional wisdom that they are separate.
Trade Review"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 *
Table of ContentsIntroduction. Cogency Theory: An Essay on Our Intellectual Affects 1
Part I. Cogency Theory
1. The Longing to Believe: Philosophers on Conspiracy Theory and the Sense of Science 33
2. Sensualized Epistemology: Affect Theory on How Reason Gets Racialized 57
3. Science as an Intoxication: Secularism Studies on Enchantment and Critique 80
4. Feeling is Believing: The Triune Brain, Mere Exposure, and Cogency 107
Part II. Feeling Science and Secularism
5. Only Better Beasts: Darwin, Huxley, and the Sense of Science 137
6. The Secular Circus: Science and Racialized Reason in the Scopes Trial 169
7. The Four Horsemen: New Atheism as Secular Conspiracy Theory 200
Epilogue. From Creationism to Climate Denialism 230
Acknowledgments 239
Notes 243
Bibliography 281
Index
