Imagining the Cognitive Science of Religion: Magic Bullets, Complex Theories, Experimental Adventures
Ebook
Uniting Thomas Lawson's essays on the cognitive science of religion, this volume explores theoretical issues in the study of cultural phenomena such as religion, the role of imagination, and the experiments that emerge from these theories.
The book begins with Lawson's influential essay “Towards a Cognitive Science of Religion,” which was the first to employ the phrase, and has since become widely adopted in many different disciplines. It signals to scholars in the humanities that the cognitive revolution has finally reached them and serves to introduce them to the world of science. The rest of the book focuses on theoretical issues in the study of cultural phenomena and describes experiments by scholars working on the connections between cognition and culture.
Described as "the grandfather of the cognitive science of religion," Lawson offers a unique perspective on the development of the field and the principles that underlie it, which will be relevant to both newcomers and established scholars.
Unites Thomas Lawson's essays on the cognitive science of religion into a cohesive volume, with a special emphasis on the role of the imagination.
A new way of understanding religion when viewed from an interdisciplinary context informed by cognitive science
Provides an overview of the cognitive science of religion, from its roots to current debates
Written accessibly by one of the founding scholars of the field
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Toward Cognitive Science of Religion
PART I: Theoretical Issues in the Cognitive Science of Religion
2. Magic Bullets and Complex Theories
3. The Wedding of Psychology, Ethnography, and History: Methodological Bigamy or Tripartite Free Love?
4. Cognitive Categories, Cultural Forms, and Ritual Structures
5. Evoked and Transmitted Culture
PART II: Cognition and the Imagination
6. Cognitive Constraints on Imagining Other Worlds
7. The Explanation of Myth and Myth as Explanation
8. Psychological Perspectives on Agency
9. How to Create a Religion
PART III: Cognition, Culture, and History
10. History in Science
11. The Cognitive Science of Religion and the Growth of Knowledge
12. Counterintuitive Notions and the Problem of Transmission: The Relevance of Cognitive Science for the Study of History
13. Experimental Adventures
Conclusion
Index
E. Thomas Lawson is the grand elder of the Cognitive Science of Religion, who brought together and mentored a younger generation of scholars as the field became established and who has continued to inspire at least two more generations after that. This long-awaited book reveals how he did it and it will be of great interest to everyone engaged in the scientific study of the religion.
What better way to learn about this field than to listen to the stories and insightful musings of the field's godfather and one of the first evangelists? This pithy volume gives readers a unique vantage of the intellectual motivations and innovations that birthed the cognitive science of religion.
Tom Lawson is one of the creators of the field of cognitive approaches to religious thought and behavior, and one of the main contributors to what is now an established discipline, with journals, meetings, and textbooks. Lawson was also a pioneer in the formal study of ritual behavior. The essays reflect the breadth and depth of his insights about the relations between human mental capacities and cultural variation.
- Title: Imagining the Cognitive Science of Religion: Magic Bullets, Complex Theories, Experimental Adventures
- Author: E. Thomas Lawson
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
- Print Publication Date: 2023
- Logos Release Date: 2024
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781350355897, 9781350355873, 1350355879, 1350355895
- Resource ID: LLS:9781350355897
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2024-04-11T00:42:26Z
Thomas Lawson is Professor Emeritus at Western Michigan University, USA. He is also Honorary Professor and Research Scientist at the Institute of Cognition and Culture, Queen's University Belfast, UK.