We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
from Part II - COGNITIVE THEORIES
Talking about the origins of religion implies working from some overall picture of what religion is. Needless to say, this picture should not leave out any cardinal points, i.e. any of the most important elements of religion. For it is around the origins of these elements that the discussion will evolve. The present volume testifies to the great advances that the cognitive science of religion (CSR) has made in defining such core elements of religious thought and practice. This chapter, however, offers a perspective from a neighbouring discipline, that of cognitive archaeology.
There are (at least) two related things that archaeologists may bring to an interdisciplinary discussion of the origins of religion. The first one, which immediately comes to mind, is the archaeological record of human evolution and history that constitutes the empirical resource most narrowly connected to the origins of religion. The second is a general understanding of the significance that the material side of human culture and behaviour has for human thought and behaviour. The discussion below concerns primarily the latter. However, in addition to contributing to answering questions already asked within CSR, both the empirical record and the ability to make sense of it may serve to inspire new questions and foci.
Through its roughly 25 years of existence, CSR has, to a large extent, devoted its energy to isolating and describing cross-cultural mechanisms of religious thought. Most studies have adopted the individualistic focus of mainstream cognitive science and have theorized the underpinning of specific cognitive processes, specifically how certain innate devices (of the brain) facilitate and structure religious cognition (recently, for example, Atran 2002; Barrett 2004; Boyer 2001; McCauley & Lawson 2002).
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
