Forskningshistoriske vaccinationsprogrammer: En videnskabsimmunologi (og en hyldest til ‘Grand Theorizing’ à la Hans Jørgen Lundager Jensen)

Abstract

The Study of Religion as a discipline is often characterized as suspended between the centrifugal forces of the philologically informed specializations into specific religious traditions, and the centripetal force of phenomenology that establishes a morphology of religious phenomena independent of its historical manifestations. In this essay, I suggest an alternative conceptualization: Inspired by the cultural immunology of German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk, I understand scientific disciplines as social interaction spheres defined by immune boundaries. Motivated by recent advances in theoretical biology, such interaction spheres can be conceived of as adaptive units that constantly modify their boundaries while maintaining integrity by means of immunizing strategies. These are primarily supplied by a perpetual re-engagement with, and re-interpretation and critique of the established conceptual models that constitutes the lattice of the sphere. The perpetual engagement with disciplinary history thus constitutes an ‘immunization program’ that, simultaneously, reinvigorate the conceptual grid that upholds the discipline and protects it from ‘foreign take-over’ or dissolution.