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Origins of Religion, Cognition and Culture
Attempts to understand the origins of humanity have raised fundamental questions about the complex relationship between cognition and culture. Central to the debates on origins is the role of religion, religious ritual and religious experience. What came first: individual religious (ecstatic) experiences, collective observances of transition situations, fear of death, ritual competence, magical coercion; mirror neurons or temporal lobe religiosity? Cognitive scientists are now providing us with important insights on phylogenetic and ontogenetic processes. Together with insights from the humanities and social sciences on the origins, development and maintenance of complex semiotic, social and cultural systems, a general picture of what is particularly human about humans could emerge. Reflections on the preconditions for symbolic and linguistic competence and practice are now within our grasp. Origins of Religion, Cognition and Culture puts culture centre stage in the cognitive science of religion.
Evolution, Cognition, and the History of Religion: A New Synthesis
Evolution, Cognition, and the History of Religion: A New Synthesis comprises 41 chapters that push for a new way of conducting the study of religion, thereby, transforming the discipline into a genuine science of religion. The recent resurgence of evolutionary approaches on culture and the increasing acknowledgement in the natural and social sciences of culture’s and religion’s evolutionary importance calls for a novel epistemological and theoretical framework for studying these two areas. The chapters explore how a new scholarly synthesis, founded on the triadic space constituted by evolution, cognition, cultural and ecological environment, may develop. Different perspectives and themes relating to this overarching topic are taken up with a main focus on either evolution, cognition, and/or the history of religion.
Religion and Cognition
One of the most exciting developments in the study of religion during recent years is the application of cognitive theory. Many people are inspired by the thought that understanding human cognition can somehow help us to understand religion. Others are more sceptical. What can neurophysiology possibly tell us about social and cultural phenomena? How do we get from the neurone to the Qu'ran? This book will enlighten those who know little about cognitive theory, introducing them to the background and subject areas where cognitive approaches can be useful.
Cognitive Approaches to Ancient Religious Experience
Explores the religious rituals and beliefs of ancient Greece and Rome, using modern research into human cognition to better understand the experiences of men and women. Integrates literary, epigraphic, visual and archaeological evidence. Accessible to those without prior knowledge either of cognitive theory or of the ancient world.
Textual, Comparative, Sociological, and Cognitive Approaches
Since its founding by Jacques Waardenburg in 1971, Religion and Reason has been a leading forum for contributions on theories, theoretical issues and agendas related to the phenomenon and the study of religion. Topics include (among others) category formation, comparison, ethnophilosophy, hermeneutics, methodology, myth, phenomenology, philosophy of science, scientific atheism, structuralism, and theories of religion. From time to time the series publishes volumes that map the state of the art and the history of the discipline.
Studying the Religious Mind
The cognitive science of religion does not have its own methodology, and yet from the very beginnings of the discipline, methodology has defined it not only in relation to the general study of religion in the humanities but also to the sciences interested in the mind. Scholars of the cognitive science of religion are using a range of methodologies, borrowing mostly from the cognitive sciences and experimental psychology, but also from biology, archaeology, history, philosophy, linguistics, the social and statistical sciences, neurosciences, and anthropology. In fact, this multi-disciplinarity defines the cognitive science of religion. Such multi-disciplinarity requires hard work and truly in...
Religious Narrative, Cognition and Culture
'Religious Narrative, Cognition and Culture' brings together some of the world's leading scholars in the fields of cognitive science and comparative religion. The essays range across diverse fields: the neurological processes and possible genetic foundations of how language emerged; the possible phylogenetic routes in the development of language and culture; the complex interrelations between the ontogenesis and the sociogenesis of cognitive processes; the value of a combination of neurology, narratology and a reworked speech-act approach that focuses on narrative; how the psychology of ritual helps make narrative beliefs possible; religious narratives; emotional communication; the role of gossip as religious narrative; area studies of religious narrative and cognition in the Bible; Indian Epic literature; Australian Aboriginal mythology and ritual; modern religious forms such as New Age, Asatro, astrological narrative and virtual rituals in cyberspace.
The Invention of Prophecy
Armin Geertz corrects what he sees as basic American and European tendencies to misrepresent non-Western cultures. Carefully documenting the historical role of prophecy in Hopi Indian religion, Geertz shows how prophecies about the end of the world have been created by the Hopi Traditionalist Movement and used by non-Indian movements, cults, and interest groups. Many of the seeming peculiarities of Hopi religion and culture have been invented, he says, by tourists, novelists, journalists, and scholars, and the millennial Traditionalist Movement has subtly co-authored European and American stereotypes of Indians. Geertz's richly detailed examples and persuasive arguments will be welcomed by a...
New Approaches to the Study of Religion: Regional, critical, and historical approaches
Internationally recognized scholars from many parts of the world provide a critical survey of recent developments and achievements in the global field of religious studies. The work follows in the footsteps of two former publications: Classical Approaches to the Study of Religion, edited by Jacques Waardenburg (1973), and Contemporary Approaches to the Study of Religion, edited by Frank Whaling (1984/85). New Approaches to the Study of Religion completes the survey of the comparative study of religion in the twentieth century by focussing on the past two decades. Many of the chapters, however, are also pathbreaking and point the way to future approaches.
