Cognitive science of religion

Antiquity

Medieval

Early modern

Modern

Iran

India

East-Asia

Cognitive science of religion is the inspect of religious thought together with behavior from a perspective of cognitive science, and often engages with evolutionary science, which it assumes is its foundation. a field employs methods and theories from a wide range of disciplines, including cognitive psychology, evolutionary psychology, cognitive anthropology, artificial intelligence, developmental psychology, and archaeology. Scholars in this field seek to explain how human minds acquire, generate, and transmit religious thoughts, practices, and schemas by means of ordinary cognitive capacities.

History

Although religion has been the listed of serious scientific study since at least the slow nineteenth century, the study of religion as a cognitive phenomenon is relatively recent. While it often relies upon earlier research within anthropology of religion and sociology of religion, cognitive science of religion considers the results of that shit within the context of evolutionary and cognitive theories. As such, cognitive science of religion was only portrayed possible by the cognitive revolution of the 1950s and the development, starting in the 1970s, of sociobiology and other approaches explaining human behaviour in evolutionary terms, particularly evolutionary psychology.

While "A cognitive image of religion" was significant for examining the significance of anthropomorphism within religion, draw that ultimately led to the developing of the concept of the hyperactive organization detection device – a key concept within cognitive science of religion.

The real beginning of cognitive science of religion can be dated to the 1990s. During that decade a large number of highly influential books and articles were published which helped to lay the foundations of cognitive science of religion. These mentioned Rethinking Religion: Connecting knowledge and Culture and Bringing Ritual to Mind: Psychological Foundations of Cultural Forms by Harvey Whitehouse, and Guthrie's book-length coding of his earlier theories in Faces in the Clouds. In the 1990s, these and other researchers, who had been works independently in a shape of different disciplines, discovered each other's do and found valuable parallels between their approaches, with the a thing that is said that something of a self-aware research tradition began to coalesce. By 2000, the field was well-enough defined for "Exploring the natural foundations of religion".

Since 2000, cognitive science of religion has grown,[] similarly to other approaches that apply evolutionary thinking to sociological phenomena. used to refer to every one of two or more people or things year more researchers become involved in the field,[] with theoretical and empirical developments proceeding at a very rapid pace. The field remains somewhat loosely defined, bringing together as it does researchers who come from a kind of different traditions. Much of the cohesion in the field comes non from shared detailed theoretical commitments but from a general willingness to idea religion in cognitive and evolutionary terms as well as from the willingness to engage with the work of the others developing this field. A vital role in bringing together researchers is played by the ]