Advances in the Cognitive Science of Religion – serie

The scientific study of religion has made significant advances in recent decades, explaining how the mind produces religious ideas, the motivations underlying religious behaviour, and the transmission of religious cultures within and across generations. In Religion Evolving: Cultural, Cognitive, and Ecological Dynamics, Purzycki and Sosis argue that further progress requires integration of isolated research findings on the various components - ritual, supernatural agent belief, myth, taboo, and so forth - that constitute religion. Religions, they contend, need to be understood as adaptive systems. Drawing from a wealth of ethnographic and experimental evidence, they situate religious systems within their local socioecological contexts, showing how religious culture adaptively responds to economic, environmental, and human health problems, as well as costly threats to cooperation and reproduction. Based in the evolutionary, cognitive, and anthropological sciences, Religion Evolving offers a holistic approach that attends to the complex, interacting features of religious systems.

The scientific study of religion has made significant advances in recent decades, explaining how the mind produces religious ideas, the motivations underlying religious behaviour, and the transmission of religious cultures within and across generations. In Religion Evolving: Cultural, Cognitive, and Ecological Dynamics, Purzycki and Sosis argue that further progress requires integration of isolated research findings on the various components - ritual, supernatural agent belief, myth, taboo, and so forth - that constitute religion. Religions, they contend, need to be understood as adaptive systems. Drawing from a wealth of ethnographic and experimental evidence, they situate religious systems within their local socioecological contexts, showing how religious culture adaptively responds to economic, environmental, and human health problems, as well as costly threats to cooperation and reproduction. Based in the evolutionary, cognitive, and anthropological sciences, Religion Evolving offers a holistic approach that attends to the complex, interacting features of religious systems.

This book follows the evidence for Asclepius' supplicants from the moment in which they realized that they were sick until the healing experiences, which they might have had at the asclepieia. From a historical perspective, the main features of the Asclepius cult, as they were shaped mainly in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, are examined. The cult is situated in the wider political, social, cultural, and intellectual contexts of the Graeco-Roman era, in which Asclepius' reputation as a divine physician spread. Social interactions and multiple neurocognitive processes are examined, which would have influenced supplicants' perceptions, choices, and reasoning about health and sickness, and attracted thousands of visitors to the Asclepius temples. The influence of the cult environment on the minds and bodies of supplicants is investigated in order to show how the cult context would have prepared supplicants for the incubation ritual. Modern theories on placebo effects are taken into consideration in order to investigate the possibility of healing at the asclepieia as a result of supplicants' self-healing mechanisms. Finally, the ways in which supplicants might have interpreted their personal experiences during incubation are examined.

This book follows the evidence for Asclepius' supplicants from the moment in which they realized that they were sick until the healing experiences, which they might have had at the asclepieia. From a historical perspective, the main features of the Asclepius cult, as they were shaped mainly in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, are examined. The cult is situated in the wider political, social, cultural, and intellectual contexts of the Graeco-Roman era, in which Asclepius' reputation as a divine physician spread. Social interactions and multiple neurocognitive processes are examined, which would have influenced supplicants' perceptions, choices, and reasoning about health and sickness, and attracted thousands of visitors to the Asclepius temples. The influence of the cult environment on the minds and bodies of supplicants is investigated in order to show how the cult context would have prepared supplicants for the incubation ritual. Modern theories on placebo effects are taken into consideration in order to investigate the possibility of healing at the asclepieia as a result of supplicants' self-healing mechanisms. Finally, the ways in which supplicants might have interpreted their personal experiences during incubation are examined.

The cognitive science of religion (CSR) does not have its own methodology, and yet from the very beginnings of the discipline, methodology has defined it not only in relation to the general study of religion in the humanities but also to the sciences interested in the mind. CSR scholars are using a wide range of methodologies, borrowing mostly from the cognitive sciences and experimental psychology, but also from biology, archaeology, history, philosophy, linguistics, the social and statistical sciences, neurosciences, and anthropology. This multi-disciplinarity, in fact, defines the cognitive science of religion. Such multi-disciplinarity requires hard work and truly interdisciplinary teams, but also continual reflections on and debates about the methodologies being used. In fact, no CSR study worth its name can rely on only one methodology. Triangulation is standard, but often even more approaches are used. This book consists of selected papers from the Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion and the Journal of Cognitive Historiography. Each chapter demonstrates a particular method or group of methods and how those methods advance our knowledge of the religious mind from the ancient past up to today.

The cognitive science of religion (CSR) does not have its own methodology, and yet from the very beginnings of the discipline, methodology has defined it not only in relation to the general study of religion in the humanities but also to the sciences interested in the mind. CSR scholars are using a wide range of methodologies, borrowing mostly from the cognitive sciences and experimental psychology, but also from biology, archaeology, history, philosophy, linguistics, the social and statistical sciences, neurosciences, and anthropology. This multi-disciplinarity, in fact, defines the cognitive science of religion. Such multi-disciplinarity requires hard work and truly interdisciplinary teams, but also continual reflections on and debates about the methodologies being used. In fact, no CSR study worth its name can rely on only one methodology. Triangulation is standard, but often even more approaches are used. This book consists of selected papers from the Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion and the Journal of Cognitive Historiography. Each chapter demonstrates a particular method or group of methods and how those methods advance our knowledge of the religious mind from the ancient past up to today.

How do people come to experience invisible beings as real social presences? And what happens when those experiences emerge in minds that are assumed to struggle with social imagination?In Autism and the Supernatural, Ingela Visuri explores the richly textured worlds of autistic young adults who describe vivid relationships with gods, spirits, ghosts, fictional characters, and unseen companions. Drawing on immersive ethnography in secular Sweden, the book follows participants who experience intimate relations, sensory experiences, and parasocial bonds that blur the boundaries between imagination, religion and everyday life.A central assumption within the cognitive science of religion is that belief in invisible agents depends on intuitive mindreading abilities - the human capacity to imagine what others are thinking and intending. Because autism is associated with differences in social cognition, scholars have suggested that autistic individuals would be less likely to form supernatural relationships. The narratives in this book challenge that assumption, as well as the idea that autistic individuals would be less imaginative, in profound ways.Visuri shows how autistic individuals may come to experience invisible others through alternative pathways rooted in sensory perception, narrative immersion, imaginative practice, and embodied experience. Rather than treating autistic religiosity as a deficit or anomaly, the book reveals how supernatural worlds can become emotionally vivid, socially meaningful, and profoundly real.Combining cognitive anthropology, psychology of religion, and neurodiversity studies, Autism and the Supernatural offers a deeply original account of how humans cultivate relationships with invisible beings - and what these invisible relationships reveal about culture, cognition, imagination, and the varieties of human experience.