Utilizing complexity : from thinking religion top-down as complex-adaptive-system towards a bottom-up practice of local null-model building

HAMPEJS, Tomáš. Utilizing complexity : from thinking religion top-down as complex-adaptive-system towards a bottom-up practice of local null-model building. In Annual Conference of the European Association for the Study of Religions: Religions and States of Freedom, 27 June - 1 July 2022, Cork, Ireland. 2022.

Basic information

• Original name: Utilizing complexity : from thinking religion top-down as complex-adaptive-system towards a bottom-up practice of local null-model building
• Authors: HAMPEJS, Tomáš.
• Edition: Annual Conference of the European Association for the Study of Religions: Religions and States of Freedom, 27 June - 1 July 2022, Cork, Ireland, 2022.

Other information

• Original language: English
• Type of outcome: Presentations at conferences
• Field of Study: 60304 Religious studies
• Country of publisher: Czech Republic
• Confidentiality degree: is not subject to a state or trade secret
• WWW: URL
• Organization unit: Faculty of Arts
• Keywords (in Czech): teorie a metodologie studia náboženství; komplexita; modely náboženství; Richard Sosis
• Keywords in English: method and theory in the study of religion; complexity; modelling religion; Richard Sosis
• Tags: International impact, Reviewed

Abstract

In recent years, the scientific study of religion has seen the rise of the call for the formal modelling & simulation methods of complexity science, which would allow research of religious phenomena as complex adaptive systems. The projects which subscribe to this call advocate a transdisciplinary view of religious phenomena, which understands religion ecologically as a vast natural and cultural entanglements merging individual people, their cognition, bodies, society, culture and environment. The utility of such views allows putting back the fractionalized field of the scientific study of religion. Such projects usually call for focus not only on the constitutive parts studied in isolation but mainly on the function of a possibly irreducible whole(s) and want to gain the scientific ability to tractate such wholes. In this talk, critically address the concept of religion as a complex adaptive system. The central axis of the paper is an exploration of the usefulness of modelling & simulation as not the gate for such big integrative theorizing about religion but as a pragmatic research tool for local integration and theory building in big data projects with diverse and scarce sources of evidence with a lot of missing data. Such situation is typical for the study of historical religions. I want to utilize the case study of medieval religious dissent implemented in Dissident Networks Project (DISSINET, https://dissinet.cz) as an example of a large comparative enterprise, where the source-oriented modelling (using computational tools as a platform for generating historical big data) benefits from parallel theoretical phenomenon centred modelling. I want to propose “null-model thinking” of religion as possibly general practice of local theory-crafting aiming for making the heterogenous evidence comparable and interoperable and 2) as conservative bottom-up “complexation of religion” in contrast to the notion of religion as a complex adaptive system.

Links

• 101000442, interní kód MU: Name: Networks of Dissent: Computational Modelling of Dissident and Inquisitorial Cultures in Medieval Europe (Acronym: DISSINET)

Investor: European Union, ERC (Excellent Science)