This book provides a comparative analysis of cosmopolitan (esoteric) religious movements, such as Theosophy, Groupe Independent des Etudes Esoteriques, Anthroposophy, and Monism, in England, France, Germany, and India during the late nineteenth-century to the interwar years. Despite their diversity, these factions manifested a set of common features-anti-materialism, embrace of Darwinian evolution, and a belief in universal spirituality-that coalesced in a transnational field of analogous cosmopolitan spiritual affinities. Yet, in each of their geopolitical locations these groups developed vastly different interpretations and applications of their common spiritual tenets. This book explores how such religious innovation intersected with the social (labor and economic renewal), cultural (education and religious innovation) and political (Empire and anti-colonial) dynamics in these vastly different national domains. Ultimately, it illustrates how an innovative religious discourse converged with the secular world and became applied to envision a new social order-to spiritually re-engineer the world.

Science and Catholicism in Argentina (1750-1960) is the first comprehensive study on the relationship between science and religion in a Spanish-speaking country with a Catholic majority and a "Latin" pattern of secularisation. The text takes the reader from Jesuit missionary science in colonial times, through the conflict-ridden 19th century, to the Catholic revival of the 1930s in Argentina. The diverse interactions between science and religion revealed in this analysis can be organised in terms of their dynamic of secularisation. The indissoluble identification of science and the secular, which operated at rhetorical and institutional levels among the liberal elite and the socialists in the 19th century, lost part of its force with the emergence of Catholic scientists in the course of the 20th century. In agreement with current views that deny science the role as the driving force of secularisation, this historical study concludes that it was the process of secularisation that shaped the interplay between religion and science, not the other way around.