ABSTRACT
This quip suggests that the philosophy of science and it components, such as epistemological issues, are quite useless to scholars ‘in the fi eld’. There is no doubt, however, that a theoretically more robust study of religion would have to give serious consideration to a number of philosophical issues. For instance: Is the study of religion closer to literature than to science? What are the characteristics of all those ‘objects’ that are considered relevant to the study of ‘things religious’? How does one defi ne, describe, analyze or explain those objects? Scholars of religion must not necessarily become philosophers of science, but they ought to see if they could solve some of the problems in the study of religion by looking towards the philosophy of science and epistemology in general, because ‘Epistemology is concerned with the foundations of science’ (Quine 1969: 69). Thus it is also concerned with the foundations of the study of religion.
