Evidence map›Paper›PMID 33587187›Full record

ArticleHistory and philosophy of the life sciences2021

Is Wilson's religion Durkheim's, or Hobbes's Leviathan?

Andrew R Atkinson

Abstract readBiographyHistorical Article
In one paragraph

Article in History and philosophy of the life sciences, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.

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0citing papers in PubMed
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1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

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3 · Its place in the literature

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0 citing papers in PubMed.

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4 · The record

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5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

1 author.

Andrew R AtkinsonSociety & Cognition Unit, University of Bialystok, Warminska 31/m22, 15-549, Bialystok, Poland. a.atkinson@uwb.edu.pl.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5865-1514

Funding

Narodowe Centrum Nauki 2017/27/B/HS1/02089
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

This paper critically supports the modern evolutionary explanation of religion popularised by David Sloan Wilson, by comparing it with those of his predecessors, namely Emile Durkheim and Thomas Hobbes, and to some biological examples which seem analogous to religions as kinds of superorganisms in their own right. The aim of the paper is to draw out a theoretical pedigree in philosophy and sociology that is reflected down the lines of various other evolutionarily minded contributors on the subject of religion. The general theme is of evolved large-scale cooperative structures. A scholarly concern is as follows: Wilson (Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, And The Nature Of Society, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2002) draws on Durkheim, (The elementary forms of religious life. Free Press, New york, 1912) using Calvinism as an example without mentioning Hobbes (Leviathan, Edited by E. Curley, Cambridge, Hackett, 1651), but it was Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) who used Calvinism as an example of a leviathanesque religious structure-which is not acknowledged by either Wilson or Durkheim. If there are even any similarities between these authors, there appears to be an omission somewhere which should rightly be accounted for by giving credit to Hobbes where it is due. I issue on conclusion, what it is that makes Wilson's approach radically different to that it skates on. I also issue it with a cautionary word.

Indexed as

History, 20th CenturyHistory, 21st CenturyPhilosophyReligionSociologyAdaptationCooperationDurkheimGroup-selectionHobbesLeviathanReligion

Identifiers

PMID33587187
PMCPMC7884303

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