ABSTRACT
Although the historical record denies us a clear consensus from the academic community, the most common response to Hans Mol's identity theory was to denounce its ostensible functionalist reductionism. The new theory was not only ostensibly capable of explaining universal religion but was also intended as an integration of, and corrective for, the multifaceted approaches and findings of the social and natural sciences with regard to animal behaviour and sociality. Constructing a general theory is a daunting task, correlating massive bodies of data with an equally capacious frame of reference. Beyond that, however, the endeavour is unavoidably plagued by scepticism from others, as the proffering of a new comprehensive theory implies evident weaknesses in existing frameworks. With the retrospection available to people in the 21st century, it is rather unremarkable that a social theorist would point to the significance of the individual or include a nonrational, affective mechanism in his or her theoretical framework.
