Bringing Ritual to Mind
Bringing Ritual to Mind
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USDThis study explores the psychological foundations of religious ritual systems. In practice, participants recall rituals to ensure a sense of continuity across performances, and those rituals motivate them to transmit and re-perform them. Most religious rituals exploit either high performance frequency or extraordinary emotional stimulation to enhance their recollection. Robert N. McCauley and E. Thomas Lawson assert that participants' cognitive representations of ritual form explain much about the systems. Reviewing a wide range of evidence, they explain religions' evolution.
- Employs cognitive science to explain patterns among religious ritual systems
- Stands out from other books in the field in its use of tools from dynamical systems theory to represent the variables shaping the patterns in religious ritual systems
- Explores and combines evidence from Melanesian materials from cultural anthropology, and Christian materials from the history of religions
Reviews & endorsements
'Bringing Ritual to Mind makes a substantial contribution to one corner of the cognitive field, the cognitive basis of ritual forms. The book extends and clarifies aspects of the theory of ritual competence presented in the authors' Rethinking Religion (1990).' Numen
'… a provocative and very stimulating set of ideas …'. Anthropos
Product details
September 2002Paperback
9780521016292
252 pages
228 × 152 × 19 mm
0.405kg
3 b/w illus. 5 tables
Available
Table of Contents
- 1. Cognitive constraints on religious ritual form: a theory of participants' competence with religious ritual systems
- 2. Ritual and memory: frequency and flashbulbs
- 3. Two hypotheses concerning religious ritual and emotional stimulation
- 4. Assessing the two hypotheses
- 5. General profiles of religious ritual systems: the emerging cognitive science of religion.
