The Question — Introduction & Methodology
~10 minLearning Objectives
- ▸Define the 13 dimensions used to compare traditions
- ▸Explain functional vs. content-level comparison
- ▸Understand the attribute-by-attribute scoring methodology
- ▸Articulate why patterns across unrelated traditions are significant
This lesson introduces the Taxonomia Religionum project: its methodology, its scope, and the question driving it. What happens when you score twenty-nine traditions across thirteen functional dimensions — and then look at the results attribute by attribute?
Why This Matters
Imagine you're a cosmic cartographer tasked with mapping humanity's answers to its deepest questions. You have twenty-nine traditions in front of you — from Aboriginal Australian spirituality, which has been asking and answering these questions continuously for 65,000 years, to Wicca, which formalized its answers in 1954.
Your job is not to judge which answers are "right" but to see if there are patterns.