Bringing Ritual to Mind - Psychological Foundations of Cultural Forms by Robert N McCauley and E Thomas Lawson (2003).pdf

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Bringing Ritual to Mind

Psychological Foundations of Cultural Forms

Bringing Ritual to Mind

explores the cognitive and psychological founda-

tions of religious ritual systems. Participants must recall their rituals well

enough to ensure a sense of continuity across performances, and those

rituals must motivate them to transmit and re-perform them. Most re-

ligious rituals the world over exploit either high performance frequency

or extraordinary emotional stimulation (but not both) to enhance their

recollection; the availability of literacy has little impact on this. But why

do some rituals exploit the ﬁrst of these variables while others exploit the

second? McCauley and Lawson advance the ritual form hypothesis, ar-

guing that participants’ cognitive representations of ritual form explain

why. Reviewing evidence from cognitive, developmental and social psy-

chology, cultural anthropology, and the history of religions, they utilize

dynamical systems tools to explain the recurrent evolutionary trajecto-

ries religions exhibit.

ROBERT N

CAULEY

is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the

Emory College Center for Teaching and Curriculum at Emory Univer-

sity in Atlanta. He is the author, with Lawson, of

Rethinking Religion

(Cambridge, 1990). He is also the editor of

The Churchlands and their

Critics

(1996), and has contributed articles to a wide variety of jour-

nals, including

Philosophy of Science, Philosophical Psychology, Synthese,

Consciousness and Cognition, History of Religions, Journal of the American

Academy of Religion,

and

Method and Theory in the Study of Religion.

THOMAS LAWSON

is Professor of Comparative Religion at Western

Michigan University, Executive Editor of the

Journal of Cognition and

Culture,

and author, with McCauley, of

Rethinking Religion.

He is the

author of

Religions of Africa: Traditions in Transformation

(1984), and

has contributed chapters to many books, articles to a wide variety of

journals, and a large number of entries to encyclopedias.

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Bringing Ritual to Mind

Psychological Foundations of Cultural Forms

Robert N. McCauley

Emory University, Atlanta

and

E. Thomas Lawson

Western Michigan University

PUBLISHED BY CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS (VIRTUAL PUBLISHING)

FOR AND ON BEHALF OF THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF

CAMBRIDGE

The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 IRP

40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA

477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia

http://www.cambridge.org

First published in printed format 2002

A catalogue record for the original printed book is available

from the British Library and from the Library of Congress

Original ISBN 0 521 81559 2 hardback

Original ISBN 0 521 01629 0 paperback

ISBN 0 511 02076 7 virtual (netLibrary Edition)

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