Decolonizing the Academic Study of Science and Religion? Engaging Wynter’s Epistemic Disobedience

Abstract

With roots in the early 1960s, decoloniality as a sub-sect of postcolonial studies made successful attempts at redefining and unearthing essentially Western conceptualizations of knowledge and knowledge formation across different fields of endeavor. Many academic disciplines have benefited from decolonial studies’ self-reflective theories and deconstructive approaches, and religion and science should not be an exception. Within religion and science as an academic field, Western and European intellectual frames have been overwhelmingly presented as definitive of globalized perspectives and knowledge, especially the definition of “religion” and “science” within the academic field. The subtle but evident impact of adopting Western epistemology as ‘the’ definitive reference frame for all peoples and cultures is the transposition of colonial and overtly Eurocentric conceptualizations and definitions of what religion and science mean as perfunctory for what religion and science should mean within non-Western frames as well as a disregard for the latter. This has led to the presentation (or overrepresentation, according to Sylvia Wynter) of a single homogenized perspective for meaning-making and interpretation of topics and themes within the field, a decision which has not only significantly impacted the field, in terms of ongoing dialectics about the relationship between religion and science, but which has also seen the exclusion of other forms of beneficial epistemic reference frames, which have been viewed as subaltern. Drawing from Wynter’s epistemic disobedience, this paper highlights decolonial approaches for engaging in the academic study of science and religion, and which will advance the path towards delinking the field from Euro-Western conceptualizations. This will unravel the rich epistemic formation within non-Western knowledge frames and the inclusion of which will greatly enrich and redefine the academic study of religion and science in the days ahead.

1. Introduction and Statement of the Problem

Coloniality and Euro-western dominance was a product of a systematic repression, not only of the specific beliefs, ideas, images, symbols or knowledge that were not useful to global colonial domination…the repression fell, above all, over the modes of knowing, of producing knowledge, of producing perspectives, images, and systems of images, symbols, modes of signification, over the resources, patterns, and instruments of formalized and objectivized expression, intellectual or visual.

(Annibal Quijano 2007, p. 169)

Religion and science as a field of study today is dominated by Western paradigms and Eurocentric epistemologies, largely due to its historical origins as will be discussed shortly. The problem here is that this overt domination has concomitantly subjugated other reference frames that would have been equally valuable for the field. These reference frames include non-Western perspectives and those of colonized cultures with rich epistemology and ways of seeing the world in which the scholarship of science and religion specifically, but also the broad field of religious studies, could potentially benefit from.

In 2021, I began my graduate program in the US and all graduate students were required to enroll in the mandatory “Theories and Methods in Religious studies” course where we were introduced to theories and theorists in the field. All the theorists we examined were Europeans, lending further credence to the problem of overwhelming Eurocentric dominance of the field. In many cases, introduction to theories and the academic study of religion can potentially ignore colonial imprints by not identifying the implications of colonial history for the field of study. Malory Nye, an independent scholar on decolonizing religious studies and presenter on The Religious Studies Project, notes that Euro-Western dominance “relates to not only how the discipline got from colonialism to the present, but also to the much larger issue of where studies of religion should go from here” (Nye 2019, p. 4). If the broad field of religious studies is implicated, the sub-field which deals with the academic study of science and religion is not obviated. For the latter to make significant leaps in the current milieu, a re-description and (as captured in the aim of this project) an undisciplining of the field becomes imperative.

Consequently, undisciplining (which I propose can be alternatively approached as decolonizing) the academic study of religion and science calls for a decentering and redistribution of knowledge and power, a shift from Western hegemony. To redirect the focus of power, the creation of knowledge as well as the recognition of alternative modes of knowing as being legitimate and valid, especially those originating from within colonized cultures, become vital. In this sense, Decolonial Thinker and Stanford Professor Emerita of African and African American studies, Sylvia Wynter, who draws from Quijano, Mignolo, and Jacob Pandian, speaks of the perceptible “disregard” Western and Euro-centric knowledge frames have for non-Western knowledge production and which ultimately perpetuates the subjugation, not only of the peoples but also their ways of knowing (Wynter 2003, p. 266).

Therefore, the task of undisciplining is an active and ongoing commitment to overturning past disregard and potential future recurrence through the presentation of new intellectual praxis as proposed by Wynter and achieved through her ‘epistemic disobedience.’ The task of this paper is to unravel the Euro-Western paradigms of knowledge inherent in the historical emergence of the academic study of science and religion, and to propose some initial steps in the long journey of decolonizing, or undisciplining the academic field while drawing from Wynter’s epistemic disobedience.

2. Defining and Engaging Decoloniality

The term decoloniality was largely introduced into modern scholarship in the 1960s by the works of theorist and humanist thinker, Anibal Quijano, and it has since become a key lens for engaging postcolonial and decolonial scholarship in recent times (Mignolo and Walsh 2018). According to Quijano, coloniality and Euro-Western dominance “repressed as much as possible the colonized forms of knowledge production, the models of the production of meaning, their symbolic universe, the model of expression and of objectification and subjectivity (Quijano and Ennis 2000, p. 541)”. In other words, the main context of ultimate dominance of Western hegemony was not only geographical or geopolitical but acutely in the formation and expression of knowledge and ways of knowing, which subsequently reinforced Western dominance and assertion over others. The ‘repression’ Quijano reiterated is closely aligned with Wynter, in her decolonial position and her rejection of the epistemological formulation that asserted Euro-Western knowledge as a globalized reference frame that became ‘the’ paradigm for every other culture and people, which we shall address shortly.

Catherine Walsh and Walter Mignolo, in their introduction to the Duke University press series On Decoloniality, asserts that the fruits of modernity were sown in coloniality, “intimately, intricately, explicitly, and complicitly entwined”, which infers that to detangle modern ways of thinking and scholarship from coloniality, in which modernity has inadvertently served to reinforce the very foundations of knowledge and power dynamics forged in colonial dominance, would be swimming against the tides (Mignolo and Walsh 2018, p. 4). The successful undoing, and delinking of Eurocentric epistemology which teases apart Western dominance and definitions of the world and ways of knowing is the core focus of decolonial approaches. This approach implies a deconstruction of the very foundations upon which Western scholarship, education and our knowledge formation are constructed. The pathway to this deconstruction is what Quijano terms decoloniality and in which Wynter engages as epistemic disobedience.

Wynter joins Frantz Fanon, Quijano and others in the decolonial project by engaging the core of knowledge and knowledge production. Quijano asserts that “it is the instrumentalization of the reasons for power, of colonial power in the first place, that produced distorted paradigms of knowledge” (Quijano 2007, p. 177). Decoloniality is thus needed to clear the way for new intercultural communication, for an interchange of experiences and meanings, as the “basis of another rationality which may legitimately pretend to some universality” according to Quijano (2007, p. 177).

3. Sylvia Wynter: Decoloniality as Epistemic Disobedience

It was decolonial thinker, Walter Mignolo, who succinctly describes Wynter’s decolonial approach and novel engagement of rethinking Euro-centric worldviews imprinted upon knowledge, beingness, and humanity as epistemic disobedience (Mignolo 2015, pp. 106–7). Mignolo, who is also an accomplished decolonial scholar, asserts that Wynter’s disobedience employs a decolonial option that goes beyond contending with colonial knowledge and knowledge formation, but instead, it seeks to (and in Mignolo’s words) “demands a delinking of oneself from the knowledge systems we take for granted” which have altogether been woven into the fabrics of modern scholarship (Mignolo 2015, p. 107).

Wynter’s loci for engaging epistemic disobedience is the core of knowing and being (human), both of which are paradigms for epistemology and the production of knowledge on one hand, and the core of personhood and human existence on the other. From the 1980s to 2015, Wynter’s scholarship critically engaged the historic–modern intricacies that birthed historical ways and forms of being human and how this recrafting was synthesized with the dynamics of power and dominance made possible by colonization. Her early engagements with this subject were a call for “destructuring that is implied, therefore, in the call for a rewriting of knowledge… the same destructuring/restructuring that was effected by the great mutation embodied in the discourse of humanism…” (Wynter 1984, p. 23). In her interesting piece titled Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation—An Argument, Wynter pushes back against the representation (or what she terms as the overrepresentation) of the Western conception of personhood and beingness which was perfunctory for the notion of a global perspective of what it means to be human. According to Wynter:

“The struggle of our new millennium will be one between the ongoing imperative of securing the well-being of our present ethnoclass (i.e., Western bourgeois) conception of the human, Man, which overrepresents itself as if it were the human itself, and that of securing the well-being, and therefore the full cognitive and behavioral autonomy of the human species itself/ourselves. Because of this overrepresentation, which is defined in the first part of the title as the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom, any attempt to unsettle the coloniality of power will call for the unsettling of this overrepresentation… on which the world of modernity was to institute itself”.

(Wynter 2003, p. 257)

Mignolo asserts that Wynter is not so much looking to “change or supersede epistemic categories and established knowledge, but rather seeks to undo the systems through which knowledge and knowing are constituted” (Mignolo 2015, p. 108).

The effects and summations of Wynter’s oeuvres had led to astute rethinking and reconceptualization of personhood, beingness and knowledge that not only unseats Western epistemology as “the” epistemology for all persons and cultures, but also reinstates and reinforces hybridized modes of knowledge drawing from a multiplicity of cultures and traditions, all of which offer igneous contributions to knowledge and knowledge formation, leading to the emergence of diversified (and more inclusive) knowledge production. Wynter asserts that disobedience is necessitated by the reality and invasiveness of secular knowledge which is presented erroneously as globally homogenous and a distinct way of knowing and being—in this case, the legitimizing of Western “bourgeois reinvention” of what it means to be human as well as a reference frame that divided all humanity into “Western humanity” on one hand and “all other humans now classified and subordinated as the West’s ostensible irrational Human Others” on the other hand (Wynter 2015, p. 187). This redefinition or reinvention served to ultimately reinforce power and dominance while concomitantly preserving Western intellectual frames from incursion in ways that ensure its superiority to other epistemic formations, especially of colonized peoples. Wynter in an interview in 1988 remarkably noted that “for the last 25 years [I have been asking] literally the same questions, how do systems of knowledge, secular knowledge, protect themselves”, a protection which ultimately benefits Euro-western epistemic frames over others (Van Piercy 1988, p. 13).

Wynter has not been alone on this journey of engaging decoloniality from the standpoint of epistemic disobedience! The postcolonial thinker and African literary activist, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, in his Decolonizing the Mind published in 1986, asserts that colonial dominance in education and scholarship persists because language was used as a tool to subvert cultures. He argues that this was mainly achieved through the elevation of European languages, alongside the simultaneous denigration of indigenous languages within most colonized societies. For Thiong’o “Language, any language, has a dual character: it is both a means of communication and a carrier of culture” (Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o 1986, p. 387). In the context of language as a carrier of culture, Ngugi argues that language is an agent of self-conceptualization and if the language through which a person’s identity and sense of self is heavily mediated and subjugated by external incursions, as seen in colonial dominance, a distorted sense of self emerges. For Thiong’o, the use of languages spans the socio-cultural context and identity formation of colonized societies into the context of learning and knowledge production codified in academic scholarship (Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o 2012). Thiong’o notes that:

“Our whole conception of ourselves as a people, individually and collectively, is based on those pictures and images which may or may not correctly correspond to the actual reality of the struggles with nature and nurture which produced them in the first place. But our capacity to confront the world creatively is dependent on how those images correspond or not to that reality, how they distort or clarify the reality of our struggles”.

(Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o 1986, p. 389)

Thiong’o preoccupation with language as a cognate weapon is closely aligned with Wynter’s fascination with the concept of autopoiesis, which was developed by biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela in 1980. Maturana and Varela define autopoiesis within the biological sciences as a systems theory that attempts to define how living systems reproduce themselves. In this sense, biological systems are essentially conceptualized not as objects of observation and description, but as “self-contained and self-organized unities whose only reference is to themselves” (Maturana and Varela 1980, p. 75). By such self-institution, a description of such unities from the ‘outside’, (i.e., by an observer) already seems to “violate the fundamental requirement which Maturana and Varela posit for the characterization of such system namely, that they are autonomous, self-referring and self-constructing and closed within their eco-systems” (Maturana and Varela 1980, p. 82).

Wynter latches onto the concept of autopoiesis as a rejoinder for the applicability of her argument and position on the coloniality of knowledge outside the humanities, by establishing connections between a term derived by biologists in the biological sciences and her decolonial approaches within the humanities. Her engagement with autopoiesis as a theme is a metaphor for the notion of the self within a colonial system and the featuring of an institution of a new order of knowing and being and “through which all that lives realizes its mode of being” (Wynter 1984, p. 22).

Wynter’s epistemic disobedience not only calls for a delinking but also a re-instituting of knowledge that takes account of hybridity and the validity of other forms of knowledge that were previously codified as subaltern, what she terms “the autopoiesis of being hybridly human” (Wynter and McKittrick 2015, p. 27). Wynter’s work aims to show how modern scholarship has emerged to create the “present normative mode of existence in order to keep the living-system—our environmental and existential world—as is; for which Katherine McKittrick describes as a “recursive logic; [which] depicts our present ecocidal and genocidal world as normal and unalterable”; she argues that “our work [as scholars] is to notice this logic and breach it” (McKittrick 2021, p. 2).

4. Decolonizing the Academic Study of Religion or the Scholarship of Religious Studies…

As noted by Thiong’o, “Scholarship is not a neutral activity, even its conceptual vocabulary” (Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o 2012, p. 42). The academic study of religion as a subset of modern scholarship is not an exception. Religious Studies is an academic field that is entwined with the study of history and multifaceted practices of human societies from its known inception. The field is both broadly and narrowly defined, depending on the context. In a narrow sense, the academic study of religion is housed within an academic institution, department or institute and it often constitutes a modest aspect of the humanities faculty, especially since religious studies have been the object of downsizing as a post-pandemic response within some universities and colleges today (Jiménez 2024).

Within a broad context, the academic study of religion involves multifaceted disciplines such as history, anthropology, sociology, psychology, biological sciences and philosophy amongst others. It is also broadly represented by several associations and societies, both national and international, who bring together thousands of scholars within the religious studies scholarship, in almost a ritual cum habitual modality. For example, The American Academy of Religion (AAR) which is perhaps the largest international body of scholars and intellectuals in the scholarship of religion has held its annual meetings in November of every year since 1990 and held gatherings/meetings since its inception in the early 1900s.1

The idea of decolonizing religion or religious studies cuts across both the broad and narrow conceptualizations of the field. The epistemological underpinnings of the theories and methods taught within the academic institutions often contain inherent colonial and Euro-Western notions, the same as the theories and frameworks that sometimes guide the presentations and discussion sessions made at societies and conferences, except in cases where the subject of decoloniality has been credibly introduced (Nye 2019).

5. Discussing Ways of Knowing—Historical Emergence of ‘Science’ and ‘Religion’ as an Academic Discipline

Perhaps no other sub-field within the broader context of the academic study of religion is steeped in Eurocentricity like the interdisciplinary study of science and religion. Several scholars have posited that science and religion as an academic discipline was one of the fields within religious studies that was uniquely crafted by Euro-Western consciousness. The celebrated science and religion scholar, Ian G. Barbour, gives a detailed review of the historical context and the early interactions between religious beliefs and scientific innovations of the 17th century in his Religion and Science Historical and Contemporary Issues (Barbour 1997). Laureate Fellow and Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, Peter Harrison, underscores significantly how Western ways of knowing and knowledge formation were implicit in the origination and formation of the academic field of science and religion (Harrison 2015). His position remains that the domains we now know today as ‘science’ and ‘religion’ are “concepts of recent coinage … how these categories emerge in Western consciousness and how their manner of emergence can provide crucial insights into their present relations (Harrison 2015, p. 3)”. The questions and musings that birthed the academic study of science and religion emerged from a somewhat contentious engagement of the exact paradigm that defined how the sciences interfaced and interacted with religion and faith beliefs and allied practices within a specific historical and cultural frame.

Historically, the most pronounced focal point, and probably the event in history which spiked interest and questions about the modality for interactions between science and religion, was the ‘Galileo affair’. Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) was known as a central figure in the development of modern sciences, but his scientific ideas were not accepted by the church authorities in Rome who saw his ideas (at that time) as contrary to Christian beliefs and subsequently led to his trial and condemnation (Barbour 1997, p. 9). The period between 1610 and 1633 saw the overwhelming popularization of a rhetoric of conflict as the defining modus operandi for science (and its scientists) and religion (specifically Christianity and the church authorities).

Despite its prevalence, the conflict model has been criticized by many scholars either as a skewed presentation of historical events, or a misplacement of the context for conflict, as noted by the celebrated sociologist and scholar of science and religion, Elaine Ecklund, whose empirical research amongst scientists reveals that the acceptance or rejection of the conflict hypothesis amongst academic scientists at 21 elite institutions in the US is largely dependent on their religious or non-religious exposure (Ecklund and Park 2009). Ecklund and Park’s research also features public opinion and the factors that make the conflict hypothesis the most prominent in academic circles and non-academic discourses, especially in the West.

Harrison notes that the prevalence of the conflict hypothesis as the paradigm for the relationship between the duo within academic scholarship emerged out of the “distorting projection of our present conceptual maps back onto the intellectual territories of the past” (Harrison 2015, p. 3). In order words, the definitions and descriptions ascribed to ‘science’ and ‘religion’ in recent times were abstractions of the particular forms of knowledge and ways of knowing that developed within a specific historical timeframe, namely the 17th and 18th century Western society. Harrison’s main aim was “to not only set out the story of how these categories ‘science’ and ‘religion’ emerge in Western consciousness but also to show how their manner of emergence can provide crucial insights into their present relations” (Harrison 2015, p. 5). Harrison’s position seems to align with Barbour who had earlier noted that several factors were at play in the rise of modern science over the course of several years, including economic factors, the emergence of technology, political interests, tendency towards leisure, the rise of modern institutions of learning and scholarly associations (Barbour 1997, p. 27).

Many scholars in the history of science and philosophy of science seem to favor the complex dynamics and varied factors perspective that was hinted at by Harrison and Barbour. Apart from the complexity presented, Purdue University professor and philosopher, Paul R. Draper, opines that the warfare view is seriously flawed both philosophically and historically because it ignores the contribution of Christianity to the rise of modern science on the one hand while also perpetuating distorted and inaccurate historical accounts of what happened in history, on the other hand (Draper 2004, pp. 273–74). In the same vein, John Hedley Brooke, a renowned 20th century author of science and religion, in doing justice to the age-long dialectics gave new historical insights into the relationship between science and religion in a lecture series that served as a presentation of his position on the relationship between religion and science as advanced in his book. Brooke argues that there has not been a one-way definition to the existing relations between religion and science; rather, there have been diverse constructions and reconstructions in many ways within different Christian traditions and in many different social and political settings (Brooke 2012, p. 8). All the different frameworks and discourses engaged in were overwhelmingly dominated and crafted within Western intellectual frames of engagement.

The essence of going over the historical overtones and undertones is to highlight how the dynamics and characters involved in the historical context and plot shaped the narrative that birthed the academic field. Because the historical curtains opened on the Euro-Western society and involved predominantly Western and European individuals, their epistemological ideas largely determined how the epistemic formations for addressing the field of inquiry developed. It was out of the historical quagmire of the Christian religious authorities pitted against the burgeoning scientific scholarly community that the academic study of science and religion emerged, as a field of enquiry suited with the tools and resources to explore the tangential interconnectivity (or the lack of it) between the domains known as science and the religion. Given the facts of the occurrences and the prevailing intellectual mood, several underlying assumptions and perspectives were imported into the academic field.

By default, the definitions, ideas, topics, themes and subjects of interactions that gave rise to the study of science and religion have been heavily Western and have inadvertently presented a narrow lens that excludes other cultures and non-Western perspectives to a large extent. The crux of it all is the very foundations of how ‘science’ and ‘religion’ and the allied interaction between the duo have been defined by Western scholarship as ‘the’ accurate lens and with attempts to impose such definitions on other cultures.

In recent times, decolonial scholars are beginning to push back against the status quo of knowledge production within the academic fields that were heavily Western. While many contend that all forms of knowledge are context-dependent and situated within historical constructs, the challenge remains, as noted by Mignolo, who is controlling the production? Why? How is it constructed? When? By what means? (Mignolo 2009, p. 160). It should be stated that it is not that Western forms of knowledge formation are altogether malevolent. Wynter drawing from Heidegger notes that Western epistemology is not bereft of knowledge, but instead, it brings all kinds of knowledge (Wynter and McKittrick 2015, p. 23).

Mignolo asserts that the Achilles’ heel of Eurocentric epistemologies is the construction of an idea of universal knowledge, “as if the knowing subjects were also universal?”; he contends that this illusion of universality is “pervasive today in the social sciences, the humanities, the natural sciences, and the professional schools” (Mignolo 2009, p. 160). This universality is also reiterated by Wynter as the process of being “homogenized according to a single genre-specific (ethno-class) Western European model” (Wynter 2015, pp. 291–92). Epistemic disobedience is thus a means to delink from the idea of the universal or globalized Western reference frame and knowledge production as ‘the’ ostentatious paradigm for knowing and being. Does the Western dominance of the academic study of science and religion necessarily imply that science and religion were not being engaged in other cultures? Not at all!

6. Evaluating Applicable Historical Case Studies—An Example

A good example to draw from is the documentation of one of the earliest anthropological explorations by Bronislaw Malinoski, despite his nuanced personal opinions. In his account of the observation of the Melanesian and Papuo-Melanesian people of Eastern New Guinea occupying the Trobriand Islands, he detailed how elements of what he regarded as scientific on the one hand, and religious/mythical on the other hand, interact within the day-to-day life of the people. Although his field of inquiry was socio-anthropology, his observations and conclusions were informed by his understanding of the domains of science and religion, which was a paradigm of Euro-Western understanding of the duo. It is imperative to note that Malinowski himself struggled with defining what science is, perhaps because he was torn between a definition that takes cognizance of the ‘rudimentary’ nature of the peoples’ understanding and mastery of the physical worlds as a semblance of the scientific, on one hand, and the Eurocentric Western modes of defining science in sophisticated terms on the other (Malinowski 1954). His attempts at a criterion for defining science shows the presence of a Western epistemic reference frame. He submits that “science of course, does not exist in the uncivilized community as a driving power, criticizing, renewing, constructing …” (Malinowski 1954, p. 18). It is important to note that Malinowski’s understanding and definition of science precluded many of the activities of the Natives which are no doubt scientific in nature.

There are several examples of activities within the community as Malinowski himself reportedly observed that displayed scientific mastery, such as the art and craft of canoe construction and navigation on the waters (something akin to the knowledge displayed by sailors and the marine profession) or the technical abilities displayed in gardening and cultivation which are closely intertwined with the rational mastery of the weather and seasons, all of which are examples of scientific enterprises displayed by the people. Sadly, much of Malinowski’s documentation was observational and recorded in narrative format, with only a few direct quotes from the people, hence the difficulty with describing these practices and interpretations of the practices from the perspective of the people and in their own words.

In Malinowski’s discussion of canoe construction, he highlighted the technical skills and “empirical knowledge of material, of technology, and of certain principles of stability and hydrodynamics, function in company and close association with magic”, but he concludes that both the magic and technical knowledge of canoe construction is “uncontaminated by the other” (Malinowski 1948, p. 13). The use of such language as ‘uncontaminated’ accentuates the perspective of Malinowski and it is highly doubtful that the people would report the interaction between magic and the construction of canoes in such language. Malinowski reports that “… magic, [is] performed over the canoe during its construction, carried out at the beginning and in the course of expeditions and resorted to in moments of real danger” (Malinowski 1948, p. 13). In this sense, despite the technical knowledge and expertise of the people in canoe construction, the use of magic in the process is non-negotiable. As such, the people do not see either as contaminant but as counterparts that culminate in the creation of mastery and wholesomeness.

Within Eurocentric models, science is paradigmatic of observations, rationality and objective evidence while religion belongs to the affective and supernatural domains. However, from the perspective of the people of the Trobriand Islands, both the aspects regarded as scientific and aspects that are religious uniquely coalesce to create a holistic understanding of their world. While Malinowski’s account reported a dichotomy between what he considered ‘religious’ and what he regarded as ‘logical cum scientific’, in reality, both represented two sides of the same coin to the people. To Malinowski, there may be a clear-cut division, but to the Natives, the physical and supernatural realms are parallel and interface permeably with little to no acutely describable dichotomy.

Another example is the garden cultivation activities of the Natives. Malinowski notes that “magic is undoubtedly regarded by the Natives as absolutely indispensable to the welfare of the gardens what would happen without it no one can tell … [however] if you were to suggest to a native that he should make his garden mainly by magic and scamp his work, he would simply smile on your simplicity” (Malinowski 1954, p. 28).

The question then remains whether his observation of religion and science in this society was an accurate representation of the objective reality of the people or whether his thoughts were heavily influenced by his Euro-Western knowledge and conceptual frames?

It can be argued that Malinowski’s observation is a Eurocentric imposition and mapping of his ideas onto the day-to-day reality of the people. The delineation and demarcation often projected onto the relationship between science and religion is non-existent in the experience of the Natives. And while Malinowski reported the display of inventiveness and creativity parallel to that of modern humanity’s inventions, as opposed to other earlier socio-anthropologists, the people’s epistemology and conceptual understanding of their world never stood a chance of being truly heard, understood, or placed at par with Euro-Western knowledge frames as counterparts.

Drawing from the concept of autopoiesis earlier discussed, it was obvious that the people had their unique understanding and auto-institution of their world and this they displayed in their “self-asserting capacity as living systems to maintain their identity” as noted by Maturana and Varela. The challenge, however, is that the auto-institution of many non-Western communities is often unacknowledged and distorted once they are open to external observation or incursion; Maturana and Varela asserts that this very crux of identity for living systems which is their self-identity “seems so far to be the most elusive of their properties” (Maturana and Varela 1980, p. 73). This often holds true for many colonized communities whose very crux of identity and culture, as noted by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (1986) is often stripped away by coloniality. The auto-instituted understanding and presentation of their ways of knowing and being is equally valid and should have been respected and acknowledged. But the challenge with Euro-Western intellectual conceptions remains the unnecessary subjugation of alternative forms of knowing and being, especially of non-Western knowledge frames, as subaltern.

If the summations from Wynter’s model and pathway for engaging decoloniality hold ground as a better and more inclusive approach to astute scholarship that is delinked from unilateral ways of thinking, then a decolonial approach to the academic study of science and religion becomes imperative. Wynter asks how Western and Westernized academic intellectuals, especially those formed and forged within a Western emergent field such as religion and science, and working in the humanities “know and constitute our social reality outside the necessarily circular and cognitively closed terms” which to an extent represents “our present order of knowledge, whose domain of inquiry is precisely that of the social reality of our present Western world-system”, the same system that decolonial thinkers are attempting to dissociate from (Wynter 2015, p. 202). If applied to the context of religion and science, how should we engage what we now know to be the academic study of ‘science and religion’ considering decolonial approaches and undisciplining frameworks?

7. From Whom? The West! To Whom? Everyone: Decolonizing the Academic Study of Science and Religion—Recommendations

From the foregoing, it has been established that the academic study of science and religion emerged out of a specific Euro-Western zeitgeist that defined its frameworks, themes, theories and methods of engagement. But the call to decolonize the academic study of science and religion is an attempt to move on and delink the field from Euro-Western dominance and cultural narratives, in a bid to craft a more holistic perspective. From a historical perspective, decolonizing religion and science may appear very hypothetical and unachievable, but it must be a journey we as an academic field are ready to embark upon through important discourses, uncomfortable conversations and critical engagements.

Rethinking new and alternative ways of engaging themes, ideas and theories within the study of religion and science through self-reflexivity is a great starting point on a long journey. The success and achievements on the journey would be significantly enhanced by the inclusion and appreciation of decolonial theorists and perspectives in the curriculum for teaching and learning. The multidisciplinary relevance and richness inherent in drawing from decolonial thinkers like Wynter and others present to students and scholars impeccable tools for epistemic disobedience and knowledge questioning, which is imperative for undisciplining our scholarship.

As noted by Thiong’o, “no matter in whose hands, scholarship impacts how people look at and view social reality, including history and culture” (Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o 2012, p. 42). As such, a quintessential travel guide on this journey to decolonizing or undisciplining the academic study of science and religion is the concept of self-reflexivity which enshrines rethinking and delinking, to employ a decolonial term, in the process of epistemic production and transmission.

Social science researchers and thought leaders on research/methodology, Egon G. Guba and Yvonna S. Lincoln, speak of self-reflexivity as a conscious process and a demand that we as scholars, researchers and intellectuals “interrogate each of our selves regarding the ways in which research efforts are shaped and staged around the binaries, contradictions, and paradoxes that form our own lives” (Guba and Lincoln 2015, p. 210). This self-reflexivity goes beyond the individual self to the collective, especially because epistemic disobedience is better achieved in the scholarship of teaching and learning across academic fields and institutions and through scholars, institutions, researchers, theorists and stakeholders in the aggregation and dissemination of knowledge within the field of religious studies. All must actively reflect on knowledge formation and knowledge production within this specific landscape.

Wynter accentuates the important roles the self of teachers, scholars, researchers and intellectuals play in the formation and transmission of knowledge, and consequently in the rethinking and delinking of such knowledge formations. In her Appendix to Black Education, Wynter asserts that “because as academics and teachers, our task is to elaborate, guard, and disseminate the kind of knowledge able to ensure the well-being of our present mode of the human, Man, one which represents its wellbeing as if it were that of the human itself, we cannot normally address the contradictions to which this overrepresentation leads” (Wynter 2005, p. 358). Consequently, to address the epistemological issues presented in ‘the kind of knowledge’ referred to by Wynter, decoloniality necessitates a priori meta-awareness of what is at stake and the application of decolonial tools to delink and rethink.

8. Conclusions

As Guba and Lincoln notes, self-reflexivity and the use of postmodern (in this case, decolonial) modes of knowledge lead to the resolution of paradigm differences and the creation of new paradigms of knowledge (Guba and Lincoln 1994). These new ways of knowing are crucial for the advancement of scholarship as proposed by Wynter (1984, 2015). In Guba and Lincoln’s discussion of postmodern or decolonial cum new paradigms for defining knowledge and knowledge production, such as theories, methods and truth claims, which underlie the tools for scholarship and learning within an academic discipline, it is imperative to inquire into who the core actors are, which is closely associated with Quijano’s focus on power; “Who initiates? Who determines salient questions? Who determines what constitutes the findings? Who determines how data will be collected? Who determines in what forms the findings will be made public, if at all? Who determines what representations will be made of participants in the research?” (Guba and Lincoln 2015, p. 202).

If the answers to these ‘who’ questions remain the West and Westernized forms of knowledge, the dominance and overrepresentation (according to Wynter) of Eurocentric knowledge frames will be perpetuated (Wynter 2003). Wynter argues for the “logical inference that one cannot unsettle the ‘coloniality of power’ without a redescription of the human” (Wynter 2003, p. 268). There is therefore the need for a “new intellectual praxis, one that enables us to now both consciously and communally re-create ourselves in ecumenically inter-altruistically kin-recognizing species-oriented terms” (Wynter and McKittrick 2015, p. 62).

The result is the production of new frames of understanding in which Wynter argues for the recognition of the “relativity and original multiplicity of our genres of being human” which ultimately takes cognizance of all modes of being on egalitarian grounds. Wynter makes bold claims on the role of scholarship in ensuring both the perseverance of epistemic disobediences to Western dominance as well as an instituting of new paradigms and self-determination, all of which “our discursive formations … and systems of knowledge must play in the performative enactment of all such genres of being hybridly human” (Wynter and McKittrick 2015, p. 31). This would ensure inclusivity for non-Western traditions and conceptions, and the undisciplining existing disciplines! In this undisciplining cum decolonial project, everyone has an equal seat at the table; when models, theories, theorists, and frameworks within the academic field of science and religion are being deliberated, other non-Western epistemic frames are welcomed, included, and respected. To ultimately achieve this inclusivity within and outside scholarship, some level of Wynter’s epistemic disobedience within religion and science is not only needed, but fundamental to the perpetuity of the field in the days ahead.