El jueves de la próxima semana, 28 de Octubre, tendremos a Jaume Navarro (Ikerbasque) en el Seminario Abierto de Filosofía; su charla llevará como título "Ciencia, Religión y Nacionalismo. Una propuesta historiográfica".

Aunque el abstract esté en inglés, la charla será en castellano. Nos reuniremos a la una del mediodía, como de costumbre, aunque esta vez en el SALÓN DE GRADOS. Dado que la UPV ha cambiado las medidas concernientes al aforo, esta vez (y, esperemos, que de aquí en adelante) no será necesario confirmar con antelación la asistencia al seminario.

Abstract:

Ciencia, Religión y Nacionalismo. Una propuesta historiográfica

Jaume Navarro (Ikerbasque)

In his attempt to explain the emergence of the modern nation-state, the late historian Eric Hobsbawm argued that “invented traditions” played a major role in the consolidation of national identities. Based on the work of historians such as John H. Brooke, Ronald Numbers or Peter Harrison, this project explores the interaction between science, religion and nationalism, paying attention to the diverse roles religious institutions, specific confessional traditions or an undefined notion of “religion” had in the construction of modern science in national contexts. Coordinated by Kostas Tampakis (Hellenic Science Foundation) and myself, the project shall argue that the conflicts or alliances of “science” with “religion” played a significant role in the constitution of modern nation-states. Among such diverse interactions that “science-and-religion-plus-nationalism” could be thought to play, one might think of the following: the use of an anti-clerical rhetoric in order to find a scapegoat for a perceived scientific and technological backwardness; the role of religious institutions in the emergence of a sense of identity and tradition in new states; the creation of “invented traditions” that included religious and scientific myths so as to promote new identities; the struggles among different confessional traditions in their claims to pre-eminence within a specific nation-state, etc. Moreover, the case-studies in this project will illuminate the processes by which religious myths and institutions were largely substituted by stories of progress in science and technology which often contributed to nationalistic ideologies.