Tuning a Periodic Table of Religions, Epistemologies and Spirituality: including the sciences and other belief systems

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It is obvious that religions have been a focus of numerous studies. These have included many efforts to classify religions. As usefully summarized in the Wikipedia article on major religious groups, such efforts have had different biases at different periods of time. Any such classification remains highly controversial as religions continue to compete for followers. Estimates of numbers of followers, and definitions of what is included in a particular religious group, continue to be vigorously contested. An additional dynamic arises from the fact that most religions necessarily consider themselves to be "right" and "good" in some absolute way, whilst framing others as "wrong", "misguided" or even "evil". These dynamics underlie many bloody religious conflicts -- especially in a period of increasingly faith-based governance.

As the Wikipedia article shows, tables can be produced to cluster religions in different ways. The question is whether some of the problematic dynamics could be rendered more explicable and predictable by moving beyond the simplest form of table to a periodic table -- inspired by the complexity of which it has been necessary to take account in the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements. The challenge of producing such a table is what is explored here. It should be emphasized that this is exercise is not intended to seek premature closure bur rather to look at what might (or might not) be an insightful way of organizing beliefs -- religious or otherwise -- given the nature of the dynamics between them. It should be stressed that this is not an interfaith exercise in syncretism. There is no question of seeking to amalgamate distinct religions or approaches to spirituality.

This exploration follows from a much earlier initiative by the author to produce a Functional Classification in an Integrative Matrix of Human Preoccupations (1982), partially inspired by the periodic table. This has since been used to order information on international organizations, world problems, strategies, values and human development -- for several reference publications (notably the Yearbook of International Organizations and the Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential). These are now accessible online.

It is appropriate to ask why religions have not been clustered in less simplistic ways to highlight their correspondences and qualitative differences. When exploring this question at the time of the Parliament of the World's Religions (Chicago, 1993), it became apparent that any such possibility was highly contentious and of little interest to any particular religion. It is difficult to cluster meaningfully the range of perspectives which each consider themselves to be the essence of meaning and a unique channel for transcendental significance.

At that time the author was only able to trace one effort to juxtapose a spectrum of religious groups for presentation on that occasion. That was an initiative by Hinduism Today. The content is now accessible on the website of the Himalayan Academy (Major Religions of the World) but no longer in a manner that highlights their correspondences.

The following effort may therefore readily be considered a case of "fools stepping in where angels fear to tread". However the degree of violence that continues to be perpetrated in the name of religion and divinity is so horrendous that the possibility of foolishness could well be considered the least of concerns.

As noted above, it is indeed a period of increasing emphasis on faith-based governance, associated with demonisation of alternative perspectives -- as a justification for any violence perpetrated on such demons. It is also a period of increasing articulation of concern at the psychosocial damage associated with religion (cf Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006; Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great: how religion poisons everything, 2007).

Whilst there have been numerous interfaith initiatives over past decades to remedy some of the misunderstandings, it cannot yet be said that these have given rise to a level of understanding that goes beyond some degree of mutual tolerance. On the other hand, with the rise of fundamentalism, any such tolerance is viewed with the deepest suspicion -- as is evident from the religions that choose to have nothing whatsoever to do with interfaith initiatives.

The notion of "religion" may possibly be usefully generalized to include somehow:

• religions as conventionally understood, but including those on the fringe of the Parliament of the World's Religions, namely neo-pagan and esoteric
• science to the extent that :
  • this defines itself as a mode of belief and, as such, is contrasted with religion (notably with respect to creationism)
  • scientists adopt institutional behaviours which are analogous to those adopted by the priesthoods that science claims to have superceded
• For Jonathan Glover (Conflict, Belief Systems and Philosophy):

The other vagueness is about what counts as a 'belief system'. This is partly about the level of generality: should we think in terms of Christianity and Marxism as belief systems, or of Protestantism and Trotskyism, or of the belief system of the Dutch Reformed Church and of the Workers' Revolutionary Party? There is also a continuum from beliefs that are consciously structured (in creeds, party programmes, etc.) and those that fall into a pattern unnoticed by their unreflective holders, a pattern waiting to be pointed out by some anthropologist, psychologist or novelist. Where on this continuum are the boundaries of what counts as a belief system? And does a belief system have to be political or religious, or could we include evolutionary theory or psychoanalysis?

• ways of knowing and epistemologies, as recognized by the literature on this matter which notably encompasses the ways of knowing of indigenous tribes (Darrell A. Posey. Cultural and Spiritual Values of Biodiversity, 1999)
• ultimate forms of understanding permitting engagement with all-encompassing transformative coherence, including:
  • spirituality and union with divinity, as variously perceived by religions
  • truth as exemplified by the Theories of Everything that are a goal of some forms of science

The construction of a periodic table is a potentially interesting way of "reframing" the cognitive challenge at this time. But:

• to be useful it must reflect essential differences, rather than seeking to minimize them;
• in doing so it needs to highlight degrees of difference that may be a trigger for conflict;
• recollecting the history of the construction of the table of chemical elements, it is appropriate to acknowledge:
  • the degree of controversy about what constituted an "element" and what went where in a table;
  • that the arrangement of the table continues to be explained in new ways in the light of both:
    • new insight as a result of advances in knowledge, notably at the quantum level
    • in order to provide more comprehensible ways of explaining its complexity to different audiences
• the table itself continues to evolve with the addition of new elements as they are discovered and with the recognition of isotopes of the existing elements;
• the actual "tabular" structure has repeatedly been challenged by creative efforts to produce more insightful arrays of chemical elements (circular, three-dimensional, etc); many of these lend themselves to extremely instructive visualizations on the web

Whether in the form of a (round) table or not, the exercise may offer a more integrative insight into the array of religions without questioning their integrity or uniqueness.

There are a number of notable precedents for use of a "periodic table" for this purpose. They might be considered to include:

• the two classical efforts developed by the the international documentation sciences and their specialists in classification:
  • Universal Decimal Classification (UDC), notably with the contribution of Paul Otlet (Traité de documentation, 1934; Monde: essai d'universalisme: connaissance du monde, sentiment du monde, action organisée et plan du monde, 1935).
  • Dewey Decimal Classification
  Both of these encountered problems of emerging disciplines and topics, leading to various unforeseen "bulges" in their schemes
  
  
• the effort of Edward Haskell (Generalization of the structure of Mendeleev's periodic table, 1972) to extend the structure of that table to include cultural dimensions
  
  
• the hypothesis based on dimension analysis by G

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