TY - JOUR
T1 - Science demands explanation, religion tolerates mystery
AU - Liquin, Emily G.
AU - Metz, S. Emlen
AU - Lombrozo, Tania
N1 - Funding Information:
We would like to thank members of the Concepts and Cognition Lab for their useful comments. Some of the results reported here were presented at the 2018 meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, and we are grateful to this audience for their discussion and feedback. This work was supported by a James S. McDonnell Foundation Scholar Award in Understanding Human Cognition and a Templeton Foundation Grant awarded to TL, as well as an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship to EL [grant numbers DGE-1752814 and DGE-1656466 ]. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the McDonnell Foundation, the Templeton Foundation, or the National Science Foundation.
Funding Information:
We would like to thank members of the Concepts and Cognition Lab for their useful comments. Some of the results reported here were presented at the 2018 meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, and we are grateful to this audience for their discussion and feedback. This work was supported by a James S. McDonnell Foundation Scholar Award in Understanding Human Cognition and a Templeton Foundation Grant awarded to TL, as well as an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship to EL [grant numbers DGE-1752814 and DGE-1656466]. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the McDonnell Foundation, the Templeton Foundation, or the National Science Foundation. None.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 The Authors
PY - 2020/11
Y1 - 2020/11
N2 - Some claims (e.g., that the Earth goes around the Sun) seem to call out for explanation: they make us wonder “why?”. For other claims (e.g., that God exists), one might accept that the explanation is a mystery. In the present research, we investigate “need for explanation” and “mystery acceptability” across the domains of science and religion, as a window onto differences between scientific and religious cognition more broadly. In Study 1, we find that scientific “why” questions are judged to be in greater need of explanation and less adequately answered by appeals to mystery than religious “why” questions. Moreover, this holds for both religious believers and non-believers. In Study 2, we find that these domain differences persist after statistically controlling for confidence in the premises of scientific and religious “why” questions (e.g., that “the Earth goes around the Sun” and that “there is a God”). In Study 3, we match levels of confidence within-participants, and we find that domain differences in need for explanation and mystery acceptability are systematically related to domain differences in epistemic commitments (whether an explanation is within human comprehension, whether the same explanation is true for everyone) and explanatory norms (whether an explanation should be pursued), which could signal domain differences in epistemic and social functions, respectively. Together, these studies shed light on the role of explanatory inquiry across domains, and point to different functional roles for scientific and religious cognition.
AB - Some claims (e.g., that the Earth goes around the Sun) seem to call out for explanation: they make us wonder “why?”. For other claims (e.g., that God exists), one might accept that the explanation is a mystery. In the present research, we investigate “need for explanation” and “mystery acceptability” across the domains of science and religion, as a window onto differences between scientific and religious cognition more broadly. In Study 1, we find that scientific “why” questions are judged to be in greater need of explanation and less adequately answered by appeals to mystery than religious “why” questions. Moreover, this holds for both religious believers and non-believers. In Study 2, we find that these domain differences persist after statistically controlling for confidence in the premises of scientific and religious “why” questions (e.g., that “the Earth goes around the Sun” and that “there is a God”). In Study 3, we match levels of confidence within-participants, and we find that domain differences in need for explanation and mystery acceptability are systematically related to domain differences in epistemic commitments (whether an explanation is within human comprehension, whether the same explanation is true for everyone) and explanatory norms (whether an explanation should be pursued), which could signal domain differences in epistemic and social functions, respectively. Together, these studies shed light on the role of explanatory inquiry across domains, and point to different functional roles for scientific and religious cognition.
KW - Belief
KW - Explanation
KW - Explanatory inquiry
KW - Mystery
KW - Religion
KW - Science
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85088147405&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85088147405&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104398
DO - 10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104398
M3 - Article
C2 - 32711182
AN - SCOPUS:85088147405
SN - 0010-0277
VL - 204
JO - Cognition
JF - Cognition
M1 - 104398
ER -