@inbook{6e85dbf0eb6748e8823612a8cbca41f8,
title = "Negotiating the Boundaries between Religion and Science in the Abbasid Empire",
abstract = "This article argues against the still deeply intrenched assumption that the origin of modernity lies exclusively in the so-called West. It puts a theoretical framework of global modernity into the context of multiple secularities, and empirically illustrates this framework through its application to the life and work of the Islamic thinker Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058-1111). In his Deliverance from Error, Ghazali provides an autobiographical account of his epistemological skepticism and his search for truth. I interpret Ghazali{\textquoteright}s text as a premodern boundary negotiation between religion and science within the historical context of the so-called Islamic Golden Age of Science. Taking Luhmann{\textquoteright}s theory of functional differentiation as my language of observation, I translate Ghazali{\textquoteright}s thought into a testimony to the emergence of modern epistemic differentiations between systems of scientific and religious communications.",
keywords = "Functional Differentiation, Luhmann, al-Ghazali, Religion and Science, Secularity, Social Emergence",
author = "Dietrich Jung",
note = "Part of special issue Historicizing Secular-Religious Demarcations, edited by Monika Wohlrab-Sahr , Daniel Witte and Christoph Kleine",
year = "2024",
month = jun,
day = "20",
doi = "10.1515/9783111386645-005",
language = "English",
isbn = "9783111386539",
volume = "Sonderband 2024: Historizing Secular-Religious Demarcations: Interdisciplinary Contributions to Differentiation Theory",
series = "Zeitschrift f{\"u}r Soziologie",
publisher = "De Gruyter",
pages = "105--124",
editor = "Monika Wohlrab-Sahr and Daniel Witte and Cristoph Kleine",
booktitle = "Historicizing Secular-Religious Demarcations",
address = "Germany",
}