science

The Immanent Frame

The Immanent Frame is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand The Immanent Frame rather than just read about it. In short: The Immanent Frame is a digital forum that publishes interdisciplinary perspectives on secularism, religion, and the public sphere. It was formed in conjunction with projects on religion and the public sphere at the Social Science Research Council (SSRC).

Key takeaways

The Immanent Frame belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect The Immanent Frame to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of The Immanent Frame from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Immanent Frame is a digital forum that publishes interdisciplinary perspectives on secularism, religion, and the public sphere. It was formed in conjunction with projects on religion and the public sphere at the Social Science Research Council (SSRC). Initially conceived as an experimental blog that invited multiple contributions from a number of leading scholars in the humanities and social sciences, The Immanent Frame was established in October 2007 by an SSRC team led by program director Jonathan VanAntwerpen, who served for several years as editor-in-chief. Among other topics, The Immanent Frame launched with an extensive discussion of Charles Taylor's A Secular Age (Harvard University Press, 2007). Sociologist Robert Bellah called A Secular Age "one of the most important books to be written in my lifetime." The Immanent Frame's discussion of Taylor's book included original contributions by Robert Bellah, Wendy Brown, Charles Taylor, and several others. The name of the digital forum itself alludes to a central concept in Taylor's book. In 2008, The Immanent Frame was named an official honoree of the 12th annual Webby Awards and a "favorite new religion site, egghead division" by The Revealer. In September 2011, The Immanent Frame partnered with Killing the Buddha to launch Frequencies, which was later named an official honoree of the 16th annual Webby Awards. Recent forums at The Immanent Frame include "Nature and normativity: New inquiries into the natural world," "Modernity's resonances: New inquiries into the secular," and "Antiblackness as religion: Black living, Black dying, and Covid-19." In November 2019, Mona Oraby, The Immanent Frame's current editor, worked with Daniel Vaca and others to launch another special project, entitled The Universe of Terms, which asked how scholars might "advance the academic study and public understanding of religion and secularism in a way that meets college students' demand for visual imagery, pithy prose, and compelling narratives." Contributors to The Immanent Frame have included: Arjun Appadurai, Talal Asad, Rajeev Bhargava, Akeel Bilgrami, José Casanova, Craig Calhoun, Dipesh Chakrabarty, William E. Connolly, Veena Das, Hent de Vries, Wendy Doniger, Simon During, John Esposito, Nilüfer Göle, David Hollinger, Mark Juergensmeyer, Mark Lilla, Kathryn Lofton, Tanya Luhrmann, Saba Mahmood, Martin E. Marty, Tomoko Masuzawa, Russell T. McCutcheon, Birgit Meyer, John Milbank, John Lardas Modern, Tariq Modood, Jean-Claude Monod, Ebrahim Moosa, Samuel Moyn, Robert Orsi, Ann Pellegrini, Elizabeth Povinelli, Vijay Prashad, Robert D. Putnam, Olivier Roy, Joan Wallach Scott, Jonathan Z. Smith, Judith Stacey, Alfred Stepan, Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, Mark C. Taylor, Peter van der Veer, Michael Warner, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Molly Worthen, and many others. In 2016, The Immanent Frame established its first editorial board. Board members included sociologists Courtney Bender and Ruth Braunstein, political scientist Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, anthropologists Saba Mahmood and Mayanthi Fernando, historian Daniel Vaca, among others. Recent additions to The Immanent Frame's editorial board include Vaughn Booker, Todne Thomas, and Nathan Schneider.

Notes

External links The Immanent Frame Social Science Research Council Alexandra Kemmerer, Geologie des Säkularen, 63 Internationale Politik, No. 1, 106-07 (2008)

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with The Immanent Frame

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what The Immanent Frame claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to The Immanent Frame before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about The Immanent Frame ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of The Immanent Frame

In research: The Immanent Frame appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses The Immanent Frame in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: The Immanent Frame is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics American blogs, Nontheism publications, Publications established in 2007, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for The Immanent Frame outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study The Immanent Frame in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what The Immanent Frame means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain The Immanent Frame out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is The Immanent Frame in simple terms?

Why does The Immanent Frame matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study The Immanent Frame?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on The Immanent Frame.