Rethinking Religion
Connecting Cognition and Culture

'… a very important book that marks a turning point in the way anthropologists think about religious ideas and practices.' Pascal Boyer, American Anthropologist

E. Thomas Lawson (Author), Robert N. McCauley (Author)

9780521438063, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 14 January 1993

208 pages, 19 b/w illus.
23 x 15.3 x 1.5 cm, 0.345 kg

'… a very important book that marks a turning point in the way anthropologists think about religious ideas and practices.' Pascal Boyer, American Anthropologist

This book is an ambitious attempt to develop a cognitive approach to religion. Focusing particularly on ritual action, it borrows analytical methods from linguistics and other cognitive sciences. The authors, a philosopher of science and a scholar of comparative religion, provide a lucid critical review of established approaches to religion, and make a strong plea for the combination of interpretation and explanation. Often represented as competitive approaches, they are rather, complementary, equally vital to the study of symbolic systems.

Subject Areas: Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography [JHMC]