The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature
is a book by the Harvard psychologist and philosopher William James that
comprises his edited Gifford Lectures on "Natural Theology" delivered at the
University of Edinburgh in Scotland between 1901 and 1902.
Scientific theories are organically conditioned just as much as religious
emotions are; and if we only knew the facts intimately enough, we should
doubtless see 'the liver' determining the dicta of the sturdy atheist as
decisively as it does those of the Methodist under conviction anxious about his
soul. When it alters in one way the blood that percolates it, we get the
Methodist, when in another way, we get the atheist form of
mind.
These lectures concerned the nature of religion and the neglect of science,
in James' view, in the academic study of religion. Soon after its publication,
the book found its way into the canon of psychology and philosophy, and has
remained in print for over a century. James would go on to develop his
philosophy of pragmatism, and there are already many overlapping ideas in
Varieties and his 1907 book, Pragmatism.
-- Excerpted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
