Scott Atran
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In Gods We Trust. The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion.
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This is an attempt to explain the
origins of religion using what we know about the evolution of cognition. A
cognitive anthropologist and psychologist, the author argues that religion
is a by-product of human evolution just as the cognitive intervention, cultural
selection, and historical survival of religion is an accommodation of certain
existential and moral elements in the human condition - elements that have
arisen through evolution.
Hardcover: 400 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.09 x 9.02 x 7.02
Publisher: Oxford Press; (October 2002)
ISBN: 0195149300 |
Pascal Boyer
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Religion Explained. Evotionary
Origins of Religious Thought.
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Many of our questions about religion,
says renowned anthropologist Pascal Boyer, are no longer mysteries. We are
beginning to know how to answer questions such as "Why do people have religion?"
Using findings from anthropology, cognitive science, linguistics, and evolutionary
biology, Religion Explained shows how this aspect of human consciousness is
increasingly admissible to coherent, naturalistic explanation. This brilliant
and controversial book gives readers the first scientific explanation for
what religious feeling is really about, what it consists of, and where it
comes from.
Paperback: 384 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.02 x 7.98 x 5.26
Publisher: Basic Books; Reprint edition (April 30, 2002)
ISBN: 0465006965
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Robert Hinde
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Why Gods Persist
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This work takes a serious look at
social scientific explanations for the persistence of religion. Psychologist,
Robert Hinde, offers a major study from the perspective of both the social
and the biological sciences on the role of religion in human society. He explores
why religions have played such a major role in the lives of individuals and
in the integration of societies, and probes why it is that if most basic religious
beliefs are clearly incompatible with modern scientific knowledge, the majority
of people in western countries still see themselves as believers. He demonstrates
that answers to these sorts of questions are the ultimate challenge to Darwinism.
The text seeks to tackle a complex problem in a straightforward way which
students should find understandable. Hinde provides chapter summaries, multiple
sections within each chapter, and draws from examples from a wide range of
religions. The text offers a holistic approach to understanding the persistence
of religion, our relationship and behaviour to religion, and evolutionary
theory.
Paperback: 248 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.91 x 9.21 x 6.18
Publisher: Routledge; (June 1999)
ISBN: 0415208262
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E. Thomas Lawson & Robert N. McCauley
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Rethinking Religion : Connecting Cognition
and Culture
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This book develops a cognitive approach to religion.
Focusing particularly on ritual action, it borrows analytical methods from
linguistics and other cognitive sciences. The authors provide a lucid, critical
review of established approaches to the study of religion, and make a strong
plea for the combination of interpretation and explanation. Often represented
as competitive approaches, they are, rather, complementary and equally vital
to the study of symbolic systems. Rethinking Religion deals with the relationship
between cognition and culture in a novel manner, and introduces a method of
analysis that will have many applications
Paperback: 208 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.59 x 8.89 x 6.03
Publisher: Cambridge University Press; Reprint edition (March 1993)
ISBN: 0521438063
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Robert N. McCauley & E. Thomas Lawson
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Bringing Ritual to Mind : Psychological Foundations
of Cultural Forms
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This study explores the psychological foundations
of religious ritual systems. In practice, participants recall rituals to ensure
a sense of continuity across performances, and those rituals motivate them
to transmit and re-perform them. Most religious rituals exploit either high
performance frequency or extraordinary emotional stimulation to enhance their
recollection. Robert N. McCauley and E. Thomas Lawson assert that participants'
cognitive representations of ritual form explain much about the systems. Reviewing
a wide range of evidence, they explain religions' evolution.
Paperback: 250 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.64 x 9.06 x 5.94
Publisher: Cambridge University Press; (October 2002)
ISBN: 0521016290
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Ilkka Pyysiainen
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How Religion Works: Towards a
New Cognitive Science of Religion
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Paperback: 272 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.50 x 9.50 x 6.00
Publisher: Brill Academic Publishers; (August 2003)
ISBN: 9004132732
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Harvey Whitehouse
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Arguments and Icons. Divergent
Modes of Religiosity.
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Why do initiations in Papua New
Guinea often subject novices to violence and terror? Why do some cargo cults
lead to regional unity and others to regional divisions? How have features
of cognitive processing in missionary Christianity contributed to new forms
of identity among Melanesians? The theory of `modes of religiosity' which
Whitehouse here develops answers these and a range of other questions about
Melanesia with reference to a set of interconnections between styles of religious
transmission, systems of memory, and patterns of political association.
Although building his argument on detailed Melanesian ethnography, Whitehouse
goes on to suggest that the theory of modes of religiosity may have wider
applicability. Thus, in the final two chapters of this book, he explores
such diverse topics as the spread of Reformed Christianity in sixteenth-century
Europe, the interpretation of Upper Palaeolithic cave art, the genesis of
tribal warfare, and the impact of literacy on social transmission and organization.
This book is intended for social and cultural anthropologists, students
of Melanesian culture, psychologists with an interest in memory, historians
of the Christian Reformation, archaeologists, political theorists.
Paperback: 320 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.50 x 8.25 x 5.50
Publisher: Oxford Univ Pr; (July 2000)
ISBN: 0198234155
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