donovan schaefer wild experiment

Donovan Schaefer

University of pennsylvania associate professor, department of religious studies core faculty, gender, sexuality, and women’s studies member of the graduate group, comparative literature, wild experiment feeling science and secularism after darwin.

Winner of the 2023 Ludwik Fleck Prize from the Society for Social Studies of Science

Winner of the 2023 Book Prize from the International Society for Science and Religion

Finalist for the 2023 Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion, Analytical-Descriptive Studies, from the American Academy of Religion

In  Wild Experiment , Donovan O. Schaefer challenges the conventional wisdom that feeling and thinking are separate. Drawing on science studies, philosophy, affect theory, secularism studies, psychology, and contemporary literary criticism, Schaefer reconceptualizes rationality as defined by affective processes at every level. He introduces the model of “cogency theory” to reconsider the relationship between evolutionary biology and secularism, examining mid-nineteenth-century Darwinian controversies, the 1925 Scopes Trial, and the New Atheist movement of the 2000s. Along the way, Schaefer reappraises a range of related issues, from secular architecture at Oxford to American eugenics to contemporary climate denialism. These case studies locate the intersection of thinking and feeling in the way scientific rationality balances excited discovery with anxious scrutiny, in the fascination of conspiracy theories, and in how racist feelings assume the mantle of rational objectivity. The fact that cognition is felt, Schaefer demonstrates, is both why science succeeds and why it fails. He concludes that science, secularism, atheism, and reason itself are not separate from feeling but comprehensively defined by it.

You know that jolt that arrives when everything  clicks , when the pieces suddenly fit? At once heady and visceral, this experience of  cogency —when lucidity emerges out of the messy thicket of experiment—is the focus of this book. From Darwinian science to conspiracy thinking to New Atheism to racialized cognition and more, Donovan O. Schaefer offers a lively account of how intellect and affect are thoroughly intertwined. Readers from several disciplines—religious studies, affect theory, critical science studies, and more—will feel themselves ‘clicking’ with surprise and delight.

Digital Communication and Cultural Studies , Millersville University

Donovan O. Schaefer’s new book is well and truly a wild experiment. It is a lively and compelling analysis of the emotional dimension of rationality that engages with a range of relevant subjects, from philosophy and social science to affect theory and the histories of science and religion. I was quickly won over to Schaefer’s view that ‘science feels’ and often find myself thinking along with his ‘cogency theory.’

Author of Victorian Jesus: J. R. Seeley, Religion, and the Cultural Significance of Anonymity

Wild Experiment

The evolution of affect theory, religious affects.

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• Wild Experiment: Feeling Science and Secularism after Darwin

In this Book

• Donovan O. Schaefer
• Published by: Duke University Press
• View Citation
• Table of Contents

• Half-title, Title, Copyright, Dedication
• pp. vii-viii
• Introduction. Cogency Theory: An Essay on Our Intellectual Affects
• Part I. Cogency Theory
• 1. The Longing To Believe: Philosophers on Conspiracy Theory and the Sense of Science
• 2. Sensualized Epistemology: Affect Theory on How Reason Gets Racialized
• 3. Science as an Intoxication: Secularism Studies on Enchantment and Critique
• 4. Feeling is Believing: The Triune Brain, Mere Exposure, and Cogency
• pp. 107-134
• Part II. Feeling Science and Secularism
• 5. Only Better Beasts: Darwin, Huxley, and the Sense of Science
• pp. 137-168
• 6. The Secular Circus: Science and Racialized Reason in the Scopes Trial
• pp. 169-199
• 7. The Four Horsemen: New Atheism as Secular Conspiracy Theory
• pp. 200-229
• Epilogue. From Creationism To Climate Denialism
• pp. 230-238
• Acknowledgments
• pp. 239-242
• pp. 243-280
• Bibliography
• pp. 281-308
• pp. 309-320

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Schaefer Wins 2023 Fleck Prize for His Book “Wild Experiment”

Donovan Schaefer, an associate professor in the Department of Religious Studies, has won the 2023 Ludwik Fleck Prize for his book Wild Experiment: Feeling Science and Secularism after Darwin . The honor, given by the Society for the Social Studies of Science, is awarded annually for “an exemplary book in Science and Technology Studies (STS) that contributes to the global STS community, based on solid empirical or theoretical research, a creative methodology, and/or an innovative transnational perspective.”   In describing the reason for selecting Schaefer’s work, the organization writes: “ Wild Experiment  is a rare book that returns to some foundational STS questions of the character of knowledge and knowledge-making, and it does so by demonstrating persuasively the inextricability of knowing and feeling. In challenging the cognition-emotion binary, Schaefer offers a fresh perspective on classic thinkers that have informed STS since its foundation.”   Accepting the award, Schaefer writes, “In  Wild Experiment , I call for a reassessment of the role of emotion in scientific knowledge-production. Combining feminist, antiracist, and queer perspectives with affect theory, psychology, and STS, the book argues that we need to abandon the thinking/feeling binary altogether. Science—and all other forms of knowledge-making—are necessarily defined by feeling at every level.” The book is “an opening move,” he adds, in a broader conversation about the link between thinking and feeling.   Schaefer has taught at Penn since 2017. His research interests include a range of topics related to the politics of feeling/affect/emotion and their links with science, religion, secularism, and material culture. Other than Wild Experiment , he has written two other books, Religious Affects: Animality, Evolution, and Power and T he Evolution of Affect Theory: The Humanities, the Sciences, and the Study of Power , as well as many journal articles.  

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Wild Experiment: Feeling Science and Secularism after Darwin Hardcover – June 10, 2022

• Print length 328 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Duke University Press Books
• Publication date June 10, 2022
• Dimensions 6.5 x 0.75 x 9.5 inches
• ISBN-10 1478015624
• ISBN-13 978-1478015628
• See all details

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About the author, product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Duke University Press Books (June 10, 2022)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 328 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1478015624
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1478015628
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.3 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.5 x 0.75 x 9.5 inches
• #766 in Science & Religion (Books)
• #1,309 in Religious Philosophy (Books)

About the author

Donovan o. schaefer.

Donovan Schaefer is an associate professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He has taught at the University of Oxford, Haverford College, Syracuse University, and Le Moyne College. He writes on the relationship between power and affect, with special attention to material culture, science, religion, secularism, race, and embodiment.

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Arts, Humanities, & Social Sciences

Donovan Schaefer says there is no division between thinking and feeling

In his new book, ‘wild experiment: feeling science and secularism after darwin’, the assistant professor of religious studies posits that thinking and feeling are intertwined..

In pandemic times, the phrase “follow the science” has become commonplace, often uttered as though science is something wholly objective. Sayings like, “Facts don’t care about your feelings,” or, “We must solve this problem with reason, not emotion,” further suggest division between thinking and feeling.

Donovan Schaefer , assistant professor of religious studies in Penn’s School of Arts & Sciences , says this is the wrong approach. In his new book, “Wild Experiment: Feeling Science and Secularism after Darwin”, Schaefer posits that thinking and feeling are intertwined. The book explores the particular philosophical and historical tradition that created these “false” constructs and introduces the model of “cogency theory” to describe how cognition is felt.

Cogency theory understands knowledge production as a process in which thinking and feeling are one, and where knowledge production is often animated by pleasure. Schaefer writes in the book’s introduction that “math, science, history, philosophy, and all other forms of formalized knowledge-making are scaled-up versions of [a] micro-level delight in the subtle click of things coming together.” “Scientists, historians, philosophers, scholars, and so on, feel the life of the mind,” says Schaefer. “They are energized by it and find joy within it. Their passion often drives their knowledge-making.” On the other hand, Schaefer says that the emotions inherent in thinking can also lead to faulty reasoning, which is why believing that thinking and feeling are separate, or creating knowledge without paying mind to emotions, can be dangerous business. “The way we work our way through a situation is always guided by feeling,” Schaefer says. “We are misleading ourselves to think otherwise. In fact, that's precisely how we disguise our own partial interests and perspectives, by saying that what we have is reason and what other people have is feeling.”

This story is by Katelyn Silva. Read more at OMNIA .

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Book Launch: Donovan Schaefer, Wild Experiment

A conversation with mary-jane rubenstein.

In  Wild Experiment , Donovan O. Schaefer challenges the conventional wisdom that feeling and thinking are separate. Drawing on science studies, philosophy, affect theory, secularism studies, psychology, and contemporary literary criticism, Schaefer reconceptualizes rationality as defined by affective processes at every level. He introduces the model of “cogency theory” to reconsider the relationship between evolutionary biology and secularism, examining mid-nineteenth-century Darwinian controversies, the 1925 Scopes Trial, and the New Atheist movement of the 2000s. Along the way, Schaefer reappraises a range of related issues, from secular architecture at Oxford to American eugenics to contemporary climate denialism. These case studies locate the intersection of thinking and feeling in the way scientific rationality balances excited discovery with anxious scrutiny, in the fascination of conspiracy theories, and in how racist feelings assume the mantle of rational objectivity. The fact that cognition is felt, Schaefer demonstrates, is both why science succeeds and why it fails. He concludes that science, secularism, atheism, and reason itself are not separate from feeling but comprehensively defined by it.

This book launch event will feature a response by Mary-Jane Rubenstein (Wesleyan University). Open to all, but registration is required. Register at the link!  

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Wild Experiment

Feeling science and secularism after darwin.

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Duke University Press
• Copyright year: 2022
• Audience: Professional and scholarly;
• Main content: 328
• Published: April 4, 2022
• ISBN: 9781478022879