Revisitando dois paradigmas na Ciência da Religião.

The study of religion involves typologies used by scholars for theoretical understanding of the field. What is outlined here is a typology in terms of paradigms, the Newtonian and the Romantic ones. After reflection on the meaning of these words, we start form the rules of method by Newton himself. These helped to shape enlightenment, which eventually led to positivism. Names such as Hume, Tylor and Durkheim were cited as representatives of this paradigm. Then romantic reactions to enlightenmentrelated rationality is described, and names such as Schleiermacher, Dilthey and Otto are cited as examples. Even though the two paradigms coexisted throughout the XX century, it was only in its last quarter that a clear naturalistic reaction occurred. Today this uneasy coexistence is still visible in the many different schools for the study of religion. In the end, it is necessary to separate ideological skirmishes around religious allegiances of scholars, and their pragmatic practice of research. Jeppe Jensen's levels of explanations are proposed as a solution to any dichotomy, and the resulting methodological pluralism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]