Alternative Spirituality among Global Scientists

ABSTRACT

Scholars, especially those in the West, often attribute the construction of alternative spirituality to a culture of individualism. Here, we explore how non-religious scientists construct spirituality in different national contexts, focusing on academic physicists and biologists. Two research questions guide our analyses: How do scientists construct an alternative spirituality and to what extent are their constructions conditioned by the contexts in which they live and work? We rely on surveys of 6,470 scientists in four national/regional contexts and on interviews with 65 self-identified spiritual but not-religious scientists. Our findings reveal that alternative spirituality is more prevalent among scientists in Taiwan and France than in the UK and the US. Second, we find that the construction of spirituality redefines the cultural meanings bundled with religion in these respective contexts. Our research helps to explain how the construction of spirituality is changing the face of religion in different societal contexts.

KEYWORDS:

• Science, knowledge, and technology
• global and transnational sociology
• sociology of religion

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. We recognize that “spirituality” has multiple meanings. To the religious, it is associated with a personal Creator, but in this study we focus on those who identify as spiritual but not religious. For clarity, we use Sutcliffe’s (2003) term, labeling a spirituality that occurs outside religion as “alternative spirituality.”

2. We use the phrase “national or regional contexts” because of the politically contested relationship between Hong Kong, Taiwan, and mainland China.

3. As we did with the survey questions, interview guides in the respondent’s native language were translated by bilingual researchers and tested and revised through pilot interviews.

4. Wording varied somewhat by version. In the US and France, the phrase “the sacred and the supernatural” replace “the sacred or the supernatural,” a change that potentially results in the underestimation of this group in these two regions.

5. We defined atheists and agnostics as those responding, “I don’t believe in God” and “I don’t know whether there is a God and I don’t believe there is any way to find out,” respectively, when asked to choose the statement that comes closest to expressing what they believe about God.

6. We dropped observations reporting that science and religion are in conflict and they are on the side of religion or they unsure which side they are on, as few scientists affirmed these responses.

7. Scientists in France were not classified as elite or non-elite due to the higher education system there. So we did not control for elite status for the region fixed effects model or the analysis of the French subsample.

8. In a supplementary analysis (not reported), we found India, Hong Kong, and Turkey to resemble Taiwan insofar that alternative spirituality did not significantly correlate with scientists’ perspectives of the science-religion interface. Italy, however, resembled the US, the UK, and France, such that spiritual atheism inversely correlated with the conflict perspective and positively correlated with the collaboration perspective. While these finding also support our argument on the differences between the West and the East, the low number of SBNR scientists in these regions render such analyses less reliable.

9. We realize that it is problematic to compare the coefficients of logistic regression across different models, and therefore did not do it (Breen, Karlson, and Holm 2018; Mood 2010). Instead, we only discuss coefficients within the same model and compare the significance across models.

10. TW_14, Male, Research fellow, Physics, interviewed November 7, 2014.

11. TW_35, Female, Assistant Research Fellow, Biology, interviewed December 5, 2014.

12. TW_04, Male, Research fellow, Biology, interviewed October 24, 2014.

13. TW_04, Male, Research fellow, Biology, interviewed December 4, 2014.

14. TW_34, Male, Research fellow, Physics, interviewed December 4, 2014.

15. TW_34, Male, Research fellow, Physics, interviewed December 4, 2014.

16. TW_04, Male, Research fellow, Physics, interviewed December 4, 2014.

17. TW_22, Male, Professor, Physics, interviewed November 12, 2014.

18. FR_63, Male, Research director, Biology, interviewed July 31, 2015.

19. FR_69, Female, CNRS researcher, Physics, interviewed August 12, 2015.

20. FR_52, Female, Researcher, Biology, interviewed July 20, 2015.

21. US_29, Female, Professor, Biology, interviewed April 1, 2015.

22. UK_35, Female, Graduate student, Physics, interviewed April 2, 2015.

23. US_58, Female, Graduate student, Biology, interviewed April 29, 2015.

24. UK_70, Female, Associate professor, Biology, interviewed May 08, 2014.

25. US_05, Female, Graduate student, Physics, interviewed Marcy 24, 2015.

26. UK_45, Male, Postdoctoral fellow, Physics, interviewed April 6, 2015.

27. US_50, Female, Graduate student, Physics, interviewed April 9, 2015.

28. TW_14, Male, Research fellow, Physics, interviewed November 7, 2014.

29. TW_35, Female, Assistant research fellow, Biology, interviewed December 5, 2014.

30. TW_38, Female, Full professor, Biology, interviewed December 11, 2014.

31. TW_04, Male, Research fellow, Physics, interviewed December 4, 2014.

32. In the broader study, we have systematically analyzed all scientists’ (both spiritual and non-spiritual scientists) perceptions of the science and religion interface. And, we found that, in France, Taiwan, the US, and the UK, the perception of science and religion being in a conditional conflict is specifically applicable to SBNR scientists.

33. TW_14, Male, Research fellow, Physics, interviewed November 7, 2014.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Templeton World Charity Foundation, “Religion among Scientists in International Context,” TWCF0033/AB14, Elaine Howard Ecklund PI, Kirstin R. W. Matthews and Steven Lewis, Co-PIs.

Notes on contributors

Di Di

Di Di is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at Santa Clara University. Her work examines the contextualization of global institutions, such as religion, academic sciences, and technology. Her work appears in journals such as Sociology of Religion, Science and Engineering Ethics, and Journal of Contemporary China.

Simranjit Khalsa

Simranjit Khalsa is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at Rice. Her research interests include the religious identity and practice of religious minorities, race and ethnicity, and immigration. In 2016, she won the Seth Balkishan Das Singhal Award from the Center for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Rice for her paper. She earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology and planning, public policy, and management from the University of Oregon in 2013.

Robert A. Thomson

Robert A. Thomson, Jr. is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. His research examines conceptualizations, attitudes, and experiences of justice or injustice, especially at the intersections of religion, social stratification, and crime.

Elaine Howard Ecklund

Elaine Howard Ecklund is the Herbert S. Autrey Chair in Social Sciences, a professor of sociology, and the founding director of the Religion and Public Life Program at Rice University. Ecklund is a sociologist of religion, immigration, and science who examines how individuals bring changes to religious and scientific institutions. She is the author of six books and more than 80 research articles, as well as numerous op-eds for national publications. In 2018 she gave the Gifford Lecture in Scotland.