Introduction: What We Do Not Know About Believing – Approaching a New Scientific Hot Spot

Abstract

The human propensity to believe is one of the most fascinating phenomena of mankind. Since antiquity, philosophers have spent time and energy trying to understand how and why humans are touched and influenced by their beliefs. Nevertheless “belief” remains a strange phenomenon; it is both wanted and unwanted. Knowledge-based societies as well as either secular or strict religious worldviews can cast belief in a very negative light. Also, from a scientific point of view belief can be considered overly complex and heavily interwoven with religion. This chapter argues against the underestimation of the relevance of belief. It highlights the predominant use of the noun “belief” as one of the basic problems in both everyday speech and scientific research. But an understanding of belief that reduces it to only a noun is not sufficient. Beliefs are expressions and results of activities. This means that believing does not exist only as a noun, but also as a verb. We are active when we do what we call “to believe.” The chapter explains that we are at the crossroads of a change in perspective from examining “belief” to examining “believing”. This change will foster our understanding of the more fundamental “process of believing” and enable us to analyze the process of how believing works in the human mind. Thus, the chapter provides an overview of the book, which starts with two introductory chapters and clusters the following chapters according to scientific disciplines (“neuroscience,” “philosophy,” “theology, religious studies, and anthropology,” “social sciences,” and “natural and computer sciences”) though many of them reflect an interdisciplinary approach.