ABSTRACT
To identify whether and to what extent spirituality is a global phenomenon, this chapter looks at how scientists in different national contexts and regions around the world view spirituality. A close analysis of scientists’ narratives confirms that there are indeed Spiritual but Not Religious (SBNR) scientists across the four national contexts that we discuss in this chapter (Taiwan, France, the United States, and the United Kingdom) but that they construct different types of spirituality. For SBNR scientists in Taiwan, spirituality refers to the continuation of Taiwanese traditions through their occasional practice of folk religions. To their French counterparts, spirituality refers to the negation of supernatural meaning and the furtherance of humanism. For SBNR scientists in the United Kingdom and the United States, spirituality means constructing an alternative value system without affiliating with a specific religious tradition.
