Imagining the Cognitive Science of Religion

A 2024 CHOICE OUTSTANDING ACADEMIC TITLE
Uniting Thomas Lawson's essays on the cognitive science of religion, this volume explores theoretical issues in the study of cultural phenomena such as religion, the role of imagination, and the experiments that emerge from these theories.
The book begins with Lawson's influential essay "Towards a Cognitive Science of Religion," which was the first to employ the phrase, and has since become widely adopted in many different disciplines. It signals to scholars in the humanities that the cognitive revolution has finally reached them and serves to introduce them to the world of science. The rest of the book focuses on theoretical issues in the study of cultural phenomena and describes experiments by scholars working on the connections between cognition and culture.
Described as "the grandfather of the cognitive science of religion," Lawson offers a unique perspective on the development of the field and the principles that underlie it, which will be relevant to both newcomers and established scholars.

Thomas Lawson is Professor Emeritus at Western Michigan University, USA. He is also Honorary Professor and Research Scientist at the Institute of Cognition and Culture, Queen's University Belfast, UK.

Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Toward Cognitive Science of Religion
PART I: Theoretical Issues in the Cognitive Science of Religion
2. Magic Bullets and Complex Theories
3. The Wedding of Psychology, Ethnography, and History: Methodological Bigamy or Tripartite Free Love?
4. Cognitive Categories, Cultural Forms, and Ritual Structures
5. Evoked and Transmitted Culture
PART II: Cognition and the Imagination
6. Cognitive Constraints on Imagining Other Worlds
7. The Explanation of Myth and Myth as Explanation
8. Psychological Perspectives on Agency
9. How to Create a Religion
PART III: Cognition, Culture, and History
10. History in Science
11. The Cognitive Science of Religion and the Growth of Knowledge
12. Counterintuitive Notions and the Problem of Transmission: The Relevance of Cognitive Science for the Study of History
13. Experimental Adventures
Conclusion
Index