DYNAMISM. In philosophy, dynamism is "the system, theory, or doctrine which seeks to explain the phenomena of the universe by some immanent force or energy" (Oxford English Dictionary). In the study of religion, dynamism is the theoretical viewpoint that finds a universal, immanent force or energy underlying—either logically or chronologically—all religious (and/or magical) beliefs, practices, and forms of association. This viewpoint has also been known as animatism, preanimism, dynamistic preanimism, and, very occasionally, predeism.

Religious dynamism received its most precise theoretical formulation at the beginning of the twentieth century, especially in the writings of R. R. Marett, Konrad T. Preuss, and Marcel Mauss. It contributed to the waning of the evolutionistic animism then prevalent and exerted a great deal of influence on both the study of religions generally and the study of certain cultural areas, but in the end it succumbed to criticism. In its...