These higher levels of complexity require their own levels of explanation. Whilst analysis to lower levels of causative explanation may often be useful and even illuminating, these lower levels never in practice fully explain all the features of the higher level of complexity. A key aspect of this line of thinking is the idea that the higher level phenomena act so as to constrain the lower level phenomena towards certain pathways of action. In other words the direction of causation is downwards from the higher level to the lower. Closely linked to this is relativism.
Relativism stresses that the data can only be seen relative to a particular observer.
And so there is no independent or absolute data, only people holding particular views and seeing the world in a particular way. The debate between these two approaches has been intense and multi-faceted. They maintain that the empirical approach that they advocate is the scientific approach to religion. It is therefore the only truly academic study of religion. Their position was forcefully put forward, for example, by R.J. Zwi Werblowsky at the 1960 Marburg Conference of the International Association for the History of Religions and in papers that he published at about this time.