As the spirituality of contemporary scientists becomes less closely tied to classical philosophy and biblical theism, the commitment to traditional varieties of realism and determinism has waned. Fritjof Capra’s The Tao of Physics (1975) is an example of this new sensibility and is notable for its embrace of both a metaphysical and methodological holism. Capra finds resources in Asian mystical traditions for a non-materialistic sort of realism and a nondeterministic conception of causality. Feminist thinkers have also offered alternatives to scientific world-views emphasizing the domination and control of nature and the divorce of intellect from emotion and other non-cognitive traits. Some feminist reinterpretations of scientific practice draw upon the experience of women scientists. For instance, Evelyn Fox Keller has clearly been influenced by the mystical elements in the character and practice of the biologist Barbara McClintock.

Many contemporary ecofeminists are inspired by the spiritual approach to nature evident in the life and work of Rachel Carson (1907–1964). The practice of science in understanding spirituality Efforts of social scientists to attain scientific standing for their disciplines have proceeded along two different trajectories. The French positivist tradition of Auguste Comte (1798–1857) and Emile Durkheim (1858–1917) de-emphasized individual experience in favor of scientifically accessible features of human groups, and Durkheim pioneered the development of quantitative techniques for identifying regularities in social phenomena. In this context religion and spirituality are treated as epiphenomena that can be accounted for by more readily observable social, economic, and psychological factors. The German hermeneutic tradition of Max Weber (1864—1920) and Wilhelm Dilthey (1833– 1911) gave more prominence to the scientist’s intuitive understanding (Verstehen) of subjects who presumably share basic attributes and habits of valuations with their interpreters. For Weber a sociological law is “a statistical regularity that corresponds to an intelligible intended meaning” (quoted in Winch, p. 113). Efforts to understand religion and spirituality are paradigmatic of the challenge facing the social sciences (Geistwissenshaften) as Weber and Dilthey understand them. Religious phenomena such as God and salvation are not publicly observable and so must be apprehended by intuitive understanding.

The hermeneutic principle stating that any cultural artifact, such as a literary text or an architectural structure, should be interpreted in the context of the whole to which it belongs invokes the whole/part differentiation constitutive of the idea of spirituality described above. The most inclusive whole in which such understanding takes is often given spiritual meaning. The American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) did this with his novel ideas of abduction and musement.

Abduction is a variety of inference (complementing induction and deduction) that consists of engendering and adopting a good explanatory hypothesis for a given phenomenon. It involves discovery more than justification. Musement occurs when people allow the powers of observation and reflection the liberty of “pure play.” Peirce claimed that when musement is genuinely experienced it spontaneously gives rise to the “God-hypothesis” as the most basic hypothesis of human thought and the widest horizon in which human understanding occurs. Peirce was also a logician who advocated the view that scientific laws in both the natural and social sciences are ineluctably social and probabilistic. As with Capra’s appeal to Asian mysticism, Peirce illustrates a spiritual sensibility that is scientific in a way that departs from classical realism and determinism.

Spirituality plays a role in the practice of science not only with regard to how statistical regularities are interpreted, but also with regard to how and why data is collected and analyzed. Efforts of epidemiologists, sociologists, and psychologists to understand the impact of various aspects of religiousness and spirituality on health outcomes illustrate the way in which studying spiritual subject matter influences scientific practice. For most of the twentieth century, epidemiologists were so disinclined to study the relationship between religion and health that one researcher, David Larson, described religion as the “forgotten variable.” This same epidemiologist documented the high frequency with which religious phenomena illustrated psychopathologies in a recent version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Through the efforts of epidemiologists like Larson who acknowledge a spiritual dimension in both themselves and the people they study, epidemiological research into the relationships between religiousness and health is now funded and reviewed by agencies of the National Institutes of Health. Newer editions of the DSM have sought to provide a more empirical treatment of religion as factor related to mental health. In these specific ways the practice of epidemiology as a research activity has changed.

The results reported by epidemiologists about relationships between religion and health have also begun to inform clinical medicine and public health. Efforts toward “holistic medicine” predate the research of epidemiologists. For instance, the introduction of chiropractic techniques by Daniel David Palmer in the late nineteenth century were motivated by a conviction that health was dependent upon a free flow of “an intelligent force . . . usually known as spirit.” Misplaced vertebrae impede the flow of spirit and so should be realigned.

Chiropractic techniques are exemplary of spiritually motivated but demonstrably effective practices that have gradually been acknowledged by medical professionals, even when they reject the causal explanations underlying them. Meditation practices— often described more neutrally as relaxation or biofeedback techniques—have gained similar acceptance and for them epidemiological studies have provided empirical evaluations.

Public health practitioners have found that interventions addressed to communities, such as regular cancer screening and increased physical activity, are sometimes more effective at promoting healthy lifestyles than similar ones addressed to individuals.

Results from epidemiological studies also show that religious people tend to have healthier lifestyles, with, for example, less use of tobacco and alcohol and more social support. Noting these points public health practitioners have started to work with religious communities, and especially with urban African-American churches, in order to implement disease prevention programs of various sorts. Seeing religious communities as potential partners rather than as ideological opponents is a major shift in public health policy and portends a productive change in public health practice. …

Religiousness has been shown to be associated with quicker recoveries from conditions like acute cardiovascular disease. It has also been shown to be associated with higher levels of life satisfaction and lower levels of pain in conditions like cancer, for which religion and psychosocial factors generally are less associated with quicker recoveries or longer survival. In conclusion, the impact of spirituality on the practice of science is most positive when it helps scientists be agents for achieving and understanding human well-being in its fullest sense and amidst the widest range of circumstances.

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