Changing Minds

Religion and Cognition Through the Ages

Series: Groningen Studies in Cultural Change, 42. Editors: István Czachesz and Tamás Biró. Peeters Publisher, Leuven, Belgium. Year: 2011/2012. ISBN: 978-90-429-2553-3. Pages: XVIII-241 p.

The cognitive science of religion is a dynamically growing new field, explaining cross-culturally recurrent religious phenomena and specific religious traditions from the perspective of the human mind. This volume is the result of a pioneering workshop held in 2006 at the Rijskuniversiteit Groningen. Some of the chapters, written by philosophers and linguists, discuss what the academic study of religion can learn from other disciplines that have already undertaken the cognitive turn. Anthropologists and psychologists of religion build bridges from different areas within the cognitive sciences to very specific issues of religion; they thus pave the way for Biblical scholars who are embracing the new cognitive method.

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Bibtex entry:

@Book{CzacheszBiro:2011,
  editor       = {Czachesz, Istv\'an and Bir\'o, Tam\'as},
  title        = {Changing Minds: Religion and Cognition Through the Ages},
  publisher    = {Peeters},
  address      = {Leuven},
  series       = {Groningen Studies in Cultural Change},
  volume       = 42,
  year         = 2011
}

Citations:

Czachesz, István and Tamás Biró (eds.) (2011). Changing Minds: Religion and Cognition Through the Ages. Leuven: Peeters. Groningen Studies in Cultural Change, 42.

Czachesz, István and Tamás Biró. Introduction. ix–xvi.
Whitehouse, Harvey. Religious Universals and Religious Variation. 3–14.
Pyysiäinen, Ilkka. Reduction and Explanatory Pluralism in the Cognitive Science of Religion. 15–29.
Nerbonne, John. Cognitive and Cultural Perspectives on Language. 33–51.
Keijzer, Fred. Meaningful Meaning: Changing Relations between Science and Religion. 53–73.
Bulkeley, Kelly. The Wondering Brain: Dreaming, Religion and Cognitive Science. 75–85.
Theissen, Gerd. Cognitive Analysis of Faith and Christological Change: Contribution to a Psychology of Early Christian Religion. 89–108.
Uro, Risto. Towards a Cognitive History of Early Christian Rituals. 109–127.
Czachesz, István. Women, Charity and Mobility in Early Christianity: Weak Links and the Historical Transformation of Religions. 129–154.
Biró, Tamás. Optimal Religion: Optimality Theory Accounts for Ritual Dynamics. 155–191.
Xygalatas, Dimitris. Firewalking in the Balkans: High-Arousal Rituals and Memory. 193–209.

Book presentation in the newsletter of the Faculty of Humanities, University of Amsterdam (June 2012).