"Science and Religious Anthropology" explores the convergence of the biological sciences, human sciences, and humanities around a spiritually evocative, naturalistic vision of human life. The disciplinary contributions are at different levels of complexity, from evolution of brains to existential longings, and from embodied sociality to ecosystem habitat. The resulting interpretation of the human condition supports some aspects of traditional theological thinking in the world's religious traditions while seriously challenging other aspects. Wesley Wildman draws out these implications for philosophical and religious anthropology and argues that the modern secular interpretation of humanity is most compatible with a religious form of naturalistic humanism. This book resists the reduction of meaning and value questions while taking scientific theories about human life with full seriousness. It argues for a religious interpretation of human beings as bodily creatures emerging within a natural environment that permits engagement with the valuational potentials of reality. This engagement promotes socially borne spiritual quests to realize and harmonize values in everything human beings do, from the forging of cultures to the crafting of personal convictions.
Wesley J. Wildman (1961-present) was born in Australia and moved to the United States in 1987. Since 1993 he has been a professor at Boston University, in the Philosophy, Theology, and Ethics Department within the School of Theology. He teaches and writes in those areas, and also in religion and science issues--especially the scientific study of religion. His home page is http://people.bu.edu/wwildman/.
Most of his writing is for academic specialists (yawn) but he is also working to communicate academic research to a wider public. To that end, he co-founded the Institute for the Biocultural Study of Religion (www.ibcsr.org), LiberalEvangelical.org, and the Spectrums Project (www.spectrumsproject.org), which reflect rather different aspects of his intellectual and political interests.
