The Problem of Disenchantment: Scientific Naturalism and Esoteric Discourse, 1900 - 1939

by Egil Asprem

The Problem of Disenchantment offers a comprehensive and interdisciplinary approach to the intellectual history of science, religion, and “the occult” in the early 20th century. By developing a new approach to Max Weber’s famous idea of a “disenchantment of the world”, and drawing on an impressively diverse set of sources, Egil Asprem opens up a broad field of inquiry that connects the histories of science, religion, philosophy, and Western esotericism.

Parapsychology, occultism, and the modern natural sciences are usually viewed as distinct cultural phenomena with highly variable intellectual credentials. In spite of this view, Asprem demonstrates that all three have met with similar intellectual problems related to the intelligibility of nature, the relation of facts to values, and the dynamic of immanence and transcendence, and solved them in comparable terms.

Genres: Nonfiction, Theory, Religion, Philosophy

631 pages, Hardcover

First published August 15, 2014

About the author

Egil Asprem, Ph.D. (History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents, University of Amsterdam, 2012; M.A., Religious Studies, U. Amsterdam, 2008; B.A., Religious Studies & Philiosphy, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 2006), is Professor in the History of Religions within the Department of Ethnology at Stockholm University, with a focus on western esotericism, new religious movements and alternative spritiualities, and the cognitive science of religion. He is editor-in-chief of Aries, a Member of the Board of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism (ESSWE), and with Kennet Granholm co-founder and coordinator of Contemporary Esotericism Research Network (ContERN).

Reviews

[Avery · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an important application of discourse analysis to the idea of science as a profession, showing how the specter of a mechanical universe -- "disenchantment" -- engendered a variety of responses over the period 1900-1939. Within this "problem history" lie discussions of the sociology of science, esotericism, and parapsychology, and this book should be required reading for anything further that people may wish to publish about those topics over this period. The power of the interdisciplinary connections being made is particularly notable.

The author favors science as a method for talking about the humanities, but the book is extremely scholarly and unbiased, and should be good food for thought for people of any persuasion interested in how "disenchantment" has been handled as a problem. This is really a top rate book and will probably become, alongside Joscelyn Godwin's Theosophical Enlightenment, a key to understanding this aspect of the 19th century, just as Hans Blumenberg and Charles Taylor are key to understanding early modernity.

[Chim · Rating 5 out of 5]

以韦伯提出的「世界祛魅」的观点为主线，梳理了近代以来，神学、神秘学和科学的发展，最让人惊喜的是作者说明了历史的局限性，让读者意识到在面对各种历史的时候应该多个心眼。收获还蛮大的，由表到里，层层剥开，祛魅是什么？科学在近代是如何建构的？神秘学这个概念又是怎么来的？神秘学在近代有哪些流派，他们做了什么，引起了哪些争议？……