Чи мейнстрімність ідеї завжди означає її впливовість?

Анотація

Abstract. The Occult Roots of Religious Studies: On the Influence of Non-Hegemonic Currents on Academia Around 1900 is an ambitious collected volume that traces the biographies of late 19th-century and early 20th-century scholars of religion and convincingly demonstrates that many of them were involved in esotericism, both privately and as a part of a natural sciences-based research programme. The volume fills a much-needed gap in the history of the study of religion as an academic discipline, and makes a significant contribution to the debate on whether esotericism should be conceptualized as “rejected knowledge”. However, the material presented in the book falls somewhat short of demonstrating that the involvement of early scholars of religion in esotericism had significant impact outside of their ideas that were strictly about esotericism. This review therefore asks the question: does proving that an idea was mainstream and socially acceptable in a given time period necessarily imply that it was influential outside of the milieus oriented towards that idea? When contemporary scholars of religion study the works of early scientists who were religious in larger religions, the idea that their religion had a significant impact on their other academic work tends to be taken with a grain of salt. The author of the review proposes a similar stance towards early scientists who were also esotericists.