The naturalness of religious ideas : a cognitive theory of religion / Pascal Boyer.

ISBN:

9780520911628

9780585135090

Title:

The naturalness of religious ideas : a cognitive theory of religion / Pascal Boyer.

Author:

Boyer, Pascal.

Personal Author:

Boyer, Pascal.

Publication Information:

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xv, 324 pages)

Contents:

pt. 1. Religious ideas as conceptual structures -- Recurrence, naturalness, and under-determination -- The varieties of religious representations -- Two aspects of conceptual structures -- pt. 2. Four repertoires of religious representations -- Natural ontologies and supernatural furniture -- Causal judgments -- Essentialism and social categories -- Ritual episodes and religious assumptions -- pt. 3. A sketch of cultural transmission -- Cross-strengthening, religious truth, and stability -- Cultural transmission and the biology in history.

Local Note:

eBooks on EBSCOhost

Subject Term:

Religion.

Cognitive psychology.

Cognitive science.

Format:

Electronic Resources

Electronic Access:

Click here to view

Publication Date:

1994

Publication Information:

Available:*

Shelf Number	Material Type	Copy	Shelf Location	Status
200.19 20	1:E-BOOK	1	1:ONLINE	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

Why do people have religious ideas? And why those religious ideas? The main theme of Pascal Boyer's work is that important aspects of religious representations are constrained by universal properties of the human mind-brain. Experimental results from developmental psychology, he says, can explain why certain religious representations are more likely to be acquired, stored, and transmitted by human minds. Considering these universal constraints, Boyer proposes an exciting new answer to the question of why similar religious representations are found in so many different cultures. His work will be widely discussed by cultural anthropologists, psychologists, and students of religion, history, and philosophy.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1994.

Why do people have religious ideas? And why those religious ideas? The main theme of Pascal Boyer's work is that important aspects of religious representations are constrained by universal properties of the human mind-brain. Experimental results fro

Author Notes

Boyer Pascal :

Pascal Boyer , Senior Research Fellow in Cultural Anthropology at King's College, University of Cambridge, is the author of Tradition as Truth and Communication (1990).