Challenges posed by the geography of the Scottish Highlands to ecclesiastical endeavour over the centuries

The claim of this thesis is that the landscape of the Scottish Highlands has ever posed a challenge to ecclesiastical endeavour over the centuries and has determined the patterns of religiosity that remain largely extant. The landmass under review conforms to a notional Highland line running north-eastwards from Helensburgh in the west of Stonehaven in the east, but does not include the county of Caithness or the Orkney and Shetland Islands. The time-scale of the thesis focuses mainly upon the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. By the twelfth century, the Celtic Church had been fully absorbed into the Church of Rome. At the Calvinist Reformation within Scotland in 1560, Roman Catholicism was proscribed, but due to prevailing factors in the Highlands, mainly connected with the remoteness and inaccessibility of the landscape, the “Old Faith” was never completely eradicated. Of cardinal importance was the ownership of the land, the dearth of a Reformed ministry conversant in the Gaelic language and overlarge parishes that precluded regular contact between congregation and minister and his manse. A serious impediment to Highland Reformed mission was the lack of a translation in Scots-Gaelic vernacular, of the Authorised Bible until 1767 publication of the New Testament in that language. Following the deposition of James VII in 1690, Prelacy was proscribed and Presbyterianism was declared to be the lawful structure of the Reformed Kirk within Scotland. Nevertheless the structure of the Episcopalian Church survived relatively intact and many of its clergy, retained their pulpits in the Highlands. The key to survival, yet again, had been the protective power of the Highland landowner. From the outset, secession and reunion have characterised the Established Church of Scotland, with the most damaging episode, that of the Disruption in 1843, on the platform of patronage. The emergent Free Church retained a legacy of evangelicalism within the Highlands long after the Free Church (Continuing) has declined south of the notional Highland line. It is stressed that in all its many facets, the Highlands displays no uniform pattern in time, place or will; the region is more profitably examined as a collection of localities, each with its own distinctive character. What can scarcely be denied is that the landscape of the Highlands determined the patterns of religiosity that we can still recognise within its boundaries today. The thesis develops its several themes both synthetically – through a geographical reading of existing historical works on religion in the Highlands – and empirically – through a detailed archival inquiry into the story of one particular Highland parish, that of Glenmuick, Tullich and Glengairn, in Upper Deeside, Aberdeenshire

Rethinking cognitive style in psychology

Bibliography: leaves 240-257.This thesis proposes to answer a single question: do the stylistic features of cognition operate independently of cognitive contents? The question itself has a history, and the way it has been framed, and the types of answers it has attracted have been related to ideological and political interests. Chapter 1 reviews four social psychological theories of the relationship between cognitive style and ideological beliefs - authoritarianism, extremism theory, context theory, and value pluralism theory. It argues that these (empiricist) accounts have been bedeviled by a tension between theoretical universalism and political critique, and have fostered the view that cognitive traits are stable, general, and pervasive properties of individual psychology. Chapter 2 focuses on the construct of intolerance of ambiguity, and shows how - in the manner of Danziger's (1985) "methodological circle" - universalistic assumptions have become incorporated into measurement instruments; and how all evidence of individual variability in cognitive style has been accommodated by interactionist models of personality, leaving the empiricist view intact. Roy Bhaskar's critical realism is used as an alternative to a empiricist psychology, and Michael Billig's rhetorical psychology is used as an alternative to universalistic theories of cognitive style. A measurement procedure is developed which can assess cross-content variability in ambiguity tolerance. Three studies are performed in order to justify a move towards an anti-universalistic conception of cognitive style. Study l evaluates the hypothesized generality of ambiguity tolerance on a sample of university students. Factor analysis and correlational matrices show that ambiguity tolerance toward different authorities is domain specific, and that different factors are related to each other positively, negatively, and orthogonally. Study 2 employs the same sample, and uses polynomial regression analysis to show that the relationship between ambiguity tolerance and ideological conservatism is highly variable across content domain. Study 3 replicates these central findings with another student sample and with different scale contents. The results of all three studies arc contrary to the predictions of the social psychological accounts of cognitive style. They show that expressions of cognitive style are context- and content-dependent, and suggest that the empiricist "thing-like" ontology be replaced with a praxis- and concept-dependent ontology

Intellectual biography of David Smith Cairns (1862-1946)

This thesis explores the formative influences, development and impact of the theology of David Smith Cairns, Scottish minister, academic and writer, during the high point of British imperial expansion, and at a time of social tension caused by industrialisation. In particular, it describes and evaluates his role in the Church’s efforts to face major challenges relating to its relationships to the different world religions, its response to the First World War, and its attitude to the scientific disciplines that called into question some of its long-standing perceptions and suppositions. Examination of Cairns’s life and work reveals an eminent figure, born into the United Presbyterian Church and rooted in the Church in Scotland, but operating ecumenically and internationally. His apologetics challenged the prevailing assumptions of the day: that science provided the only intellectually legitimate means of exploring the world, and that scientific determinism ruled out the Christian conception of the world as governed by Providence. A major feature of his theology was the presentation of Christianity as a ‘reasonable’ faith, and throughout his life he maintained a particular concern for young people, having endured his own crisis of faith when a student in Edinburgh. He enjoyed a decades long involvement with the Student Christian Movement and the World Student Christian Federation, based on a mutually enriching relationship with one of its leading figures, the renowned American evangelist John Raleigh Mott. As chair of Commission IV of the 1910 World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh, Cairns spearheaded efforts to encourage the Church to redefine its role in relation to the different world religions, and to adopt a fulfilment theology that allowed for a dialogical rather than confrontational model of mission. As leader of a Y.M.C.A. sponsored interdenominational enquiry into the effects of the First World War on the religious life of the nation and attitudes to the Churches, Cairns reported on the Churches’ failure to engage with a large section of the population, and in particular with the young men at the Front. The resulting report offered an important critique of the Church and its vision in the early twentieth century, and provided a call for reform and renewal in Church life, with an emphasis on the need for social witness. The thesis concludes that in these three major areas Cairns provided a prophetic voice for the Church as it entered the twentieth century and faced the challenges of that time

A Gadamerian approach to science and religion historiographies: reinterpreting essentialism, anachronism, and complexity in recent science and religion historiographies through the thought of Hans-Georg Gadamer

This thesis explores three historiographical categories used in recent science and religion research: essentialism, anachronism, and complexity. It observes that these categories are historico-methodological tools that are deployed by historians to point at problems implicit in “science and religion” rhetoric. The three categories under investigation are notions deployed in the historiographical literature to observe that science and religion discourses tend to be misleading if they do not consider the historical nature of “science” and “religion.” This thesis agrees with the historians and in agreement with them argues that the way they are using the notions of essentialism, anachronism, and complexity is nonetheless problematic. The goal of this thesis in exploring these three notions is to show that historians use them in a problematic way and that despite these notions being used in a problematic way they still refer to issues that need addressing. These notions raise questions of history, temporality, rhetoric, and language, and by delving into these questions the historiographies that employ the notions of essentialism, anachronism, and complexity gain further relevance. Works such as John Hedley Brooke’s Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives (1991) and Peter Harrison’s The Territories of Science and Religion (2015) constitute the soil of this thesis. They are key parts of recent revisionist historiographical attempts to challenge and subvert many of the misleading historical myths and narratives about science and religion that to this day still play important roles in scientific, political, philosophical, theological, ethical, and cultural debates. What motivated the planting of this thesis in such a soil is the thought of German philosopher and philologist Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002): our main methodological conversation partner. This thesis stems from wrestling with his work and is “a hermeneutical approach” to science and religion historiographies in reference to him. An implication of a hermeneutical approach is that historiographical works are engaged in this thesis by attending to their form and content. This thesis shows that the ways in which historians are telling their histories can hinder attempts at changing current science and religion rhetoric. In the context of science and religion historiographies, problems with science and religion rhetoric emerge in perceived tensions between the present and the past. On the one hand, there are contemporary issues that seem to relate to “science” and “religion,” and on the other, past realities that are seen now as having to do with science and religion. This thesis finds that the categories of essentialism, anachronism, and complexity are used in science and religion historiographies to deal partly with the tensions that give birth to science and religion rhetoric. Also, this thesis finds that the three categories feed a critical hermeneutic implicit in such historiographies. By conversing with Gadamer’s thought, this thesis unpacks the categories under investigation. These categories are usually deployed in science and religion historical scholarship as negations: anti-essentialism, rejection of anachronism, and complexity as against historical narratives of harmony or conflict between science and religion. Gadamer’s work helps us see why the methodological use of these categories in a negative register does not rid us of essences, anachronism, or meta-narratives of harmony or conflict; historiographies proceeding mainly in the negative register become vehicles of what they negate precisely through the means of critique. The thesis proceeds by: bringing into the open the critical hermeneutical habit common to these historiographies (Part One); observing some of the blind spots and assumptions of such a habit at the same time as its insights are integrated and re-interpreted (Part Two); and showing scholarship already building on some of these insights, practicing what could be called a “post-critical” hermeneutics (Part Three). A post-critical hermeneutics is a hermeneutics of tradition, called in the end of this thesis a hermeneutics of transmission. A hermeneutics of transmission does not eschew critique, but it includes critique in a wider panorama in order to integrate the observations from historiography without being parasitic on what they critique. This thesis concludes in its final chapter by displaying the hermeneutics of transmission at work, showcasing scholarship conscious of the limitations of an overall critical approach. By acknowledging the limits of critique, such scholarship moves in new and relevant directions, suggesting constructive possibilities for science and religion scholarship