1st Edition

The Disunity of American Culture Science, Religion, Technology and the Secular State

By John C. Caiazza Copyright 2013
    295 Pages
    by Routledge

    296 Pages
    by Routledge

    The Disunity of American Culture describes culture now, when different forces are influencing it than in the past, altering it to near incomprehensibility. Identity issues have an effect on culture and politics; more influential is the question of what support the state is obligated to provide the individual. John C. Caiazza seeks to explain how this situation came to be.

    He begins with an explanation of the origins of Protestantism in America. Caiazza describes how the American religion has declined and the recent responses the decline has provoked. Caiazza follows with an analysis of science as it presently exists in American culture. The work of three scientists prominent in their respective fields Steven Weinberg in physics, E. O. Wilson in biology, and Stanley Milgram in psychology are examined with respect to how their work has influenced culture.

    The author examines the failure of America's school of philosophy, pragmatism, to explain the relationship between religion, science, and general culture, even though its founders, Charles S. Peirce and William James, made serious efforts to do so. He concludes by making the case that there is a contradiction between scientific reason and the claim of state power. Caiazza argues that cultural disharmony will guarantee that the secular state never achieves the dominance over culture and political life it desires.

    Acknowledgments1.Dissonant Themes in American CulturePart I:Origin and Decline of the American Religion2.America, Inventor of Religions3.How Tufts University Lost Its Religion4.Three Representative Responses to DeclinePart II:The State of Science and Culture Now5.The Actual Origins of Modern Science6.Athens and Jerusalem in the Twenty-First Century7.The Counterrevolution in the Philosophy of SciencePart III:Science as Cultural Unifier: Three American Scientists8.Atoms in the Cultural Void: Steven Weinberg's Material Dreams9.Edward O. Wilson's Grand Unified Theory: God and Man in the Biological Universe10.Stanley Milgram's Famous Experiments and the Awful Authority of Social SciencePart IV:Decline and Consequences11.The Cultural Decline of Physical Theory12.Three Religious Fragments13.Decline of the American Philosophy: A Tragedy in Three ActsPart V:Unresolvable Differences14.The Arrival of Techno-Secularism15.Sex and the Secular State16.Inevitable Monotheism: Why God Hasn't Altogether Left the Public Square17.Cultural Disunity, Toleration, and the Secular StateIndex

    Biography

    John C. Caiazza