A kernel of doubt.
The writer discusses the origins of agnosticism and skepticism and suggests that they were much more widely distributed than European commentators usually suppose. He states that although the term agnosticism was an invention of 19th-century Europe, the type of doubt that it embodies is not confine...
| Published in: | Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute Vol. 2; pp. 667 - 682 |
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| Format: | Article |
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Wiley-Blackwell
December 1996
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| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| Summary: | The writer discusses the origins of agnosticism and skepticism and suggests that they were much more widely distributed than European commentators usually suppose. He states that although the term agnosticism was an invention of 19th-century Europe, the type of doubt that it embodies is not confined to the post-Enlightenment West. He reveals that explicit forms of skepticism and agnosticism were also found in the Near East and in India and the Far East, where countercultural traditions often arose in opposition to the hegemonic religious ideologies. He states that simpler societies also display a kernel of doubt and that these attitudes emerge from the cognitive contradictions that characterize beliefs and practices regarding the supernatural and that are embedded in the use of language itself. |
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