This article deals with phenomena occurring at the interface of the existential, the religious, and scientific inquiry. On the basis of in‐depth interviews with Polish physicists and biologists, I examine the role that science and religion play in their narrative of the meaning of the Universe and human life. I show that the narratives about meaning have a system‐related (“amalgam") character that is associated with responses to adjacent metaphysical questions, including those based on scientific knowledge. I reconstruct the typical amalgam questions of Polish scientists and come to a conclusion about the stability of religious and nonreligious amalgams in this group. Critically referring to the thesis concerning the secularizing impact of science, I conclude that science by itself does not have a destructive effect on Polish scientists’ confidence that life and the Universe are meaningful, but is rather an exacerbating factor of the existing worldview system.

The article contributes to the discussion on the secularizing impact of science in modern societies. The starting point of the research is sociological data that shows lower religiosity of scientific communities in comparison to the general population in various countries. This might indicate that science does exert a secularizing force on modern ideologies. The explanatory hypotheses of this phenomenon are, however, ambiguous and predominantly concern Western countries. Based on 100 in-depth interviews with physicists and biologists from Central and Eastern Europe (Poland and Ukraine), it demonstrates the crucial role of cultural and historical context in the formulation of the (un)faith of the scientists. The scientific knowledge and participation in science as a social institution is more complementary than decisive in these processes, moreover, these factors play different roles in biographical trajectories of the Polish and Ukrainian natural scientists.

The article explores aspects of the Soviet atheistic regime that contributed to the formation of the religious imaginary of believing Ukrainian and Lithuanian scientists born in 1930–1960s. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, most of them did not accept Orthodox, Catholic, or other institutional religions, but instead created their own privatized religious patterns, using science-related elements in their imaginary. This distinguished them from the other national groups participating in the study. In the article, I propose an interpretation for this phenomenon. I analyze 29 in-depth interviews of a larger sample and focus on the biographies of the older cohort of natural scientists from Lithuania and Ukraine to show how the Soviet political and normative context supported their science-based imaginary. This allows us to draw some parallels concerning secularization—gradual in the West but forced in the Soviet case—and the role of science in this process.

Maria RogińskaUniwersytet Pedagogiczny im. KEN w Krakowie MIEJSCE CZŁOWIEKA WE WSZECHŚWIECIE. (NIE)RELIGIJNE NARRACJE POLSKICH I UKRAIŃSKICH PRZYRODNIKÓWArtykuł stanowi próbę wglądu socjologicznego w problematykę imaginarium społecznego na przecięciu nauki i religii, jest głosem w dyskusji na temat roli nauki w procesach sekularyzacji. Kontynuując tradycję socjologiczną zgłębiającą rozumienie kulturowej roli nauki poprzez badania akademii, Autorka opiera analizę na materiale 100 wywiadów pogłębionych z fizykami oraz biologami z Polski i Ukrainy. Poświęca uwagę w szczególności imaginarium dotyczącemu miejsca człowieka we wszechświecie. Celem artykułu jest pokazanie istotnego zróżnicowania w tym zakresie między populacjami uczonych z Polski i Ukrainy oraz ustalenie konsekwencji, jakie ma ono dla utraty lub zachowania ich religijności. Uzyskane dane pozwalają dostrzec, że wpływ nauki jako wiedzy obiektywnej na religijność uczonych nie jest uniwersalny, lecz silnie zapośredniczony kulturowo. Zamiast poszukiwania jednej formuły tego wpływu warto zatem mówić o wielu jego kulturowo zależnych konfiguracjach.