Religion Explained?

Luther H. Martin is Professor of Religion Emeritus at the University of Vermont, USA. Donald Wiebe is Professor of Philosopy of Religion, Trinity College, University of Toronto, Canada.

• List of contributorsIntroduction: Religion Explained? The Cognitive Science of Religion after Twenty-five Years, Luther H. Martin (University of Vermont, USA) and Donald Wiebe (University of Toronto, Canada)Part One: Retrospectives1. The Cognitive Science of Religion and the Growth of Knowledge, E. Thomas Lawson (Queen’s University, Belfast, UK)2. Twenty-Five Years In: Landmark Empirical Findings in the Cognitive Science of Religion, Robert N. McCauley (Emory University, USA)3. Twenty-Five Years of CSR: A Personal Retrospective, Harvey Whitehouse (University of Oxford, UK)4. The Beautiful Butterfly: On the History and Prospects of the Cognitive Science of Religion, Uffe Schjødt & Armin W. Geertz (Aarhus University, Denmark)Part Two: State of the Art5. Religion Explained? Some Variants of Cognitive Theory, Stewart Elliott Guthrie, (Fordham University, USA)6. Cognitive Attractors in the Evolution and Diffusion of Religious Representations, Pascal Boyer (Washington University in St. Louis) & Nicolas Baumard (École Normale Supérieure Paris, France)7. The Long Way from Cognitive Science to History: To Shorten the Distance and Fill in the Blanks, Panayotis Pachis & Olympia Panagiotidou (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece)8. The Indispensability of Cognitive Science for a Genuine History of Religion, Anders Klostergaard Petersen (Aarhus University, Denmark)Part Three: CSR 2.09. Exiting the Motel of the Mysteries? How Historiographical Floccinaucinihilipilification Is Affecting CSR 2.0, Leonardo Ambasciano (Masaryk University, Czech Republic)10. Minimal Counterintuitiveness Revisited, Again: The Role of Emotional Valence in Memory for Conceptual Incongruity, Micheala Porubanova (State University of New York, Farmingdale, USA) & John H. Shaver (Victoria University of Wellington)11. Constraints on Theory-Building in the Cognitive Science of Religion with Reflections on the Influence of Physics Envy and the Principle of Sufficient Reason, Benson Saler & Charles A. Ziegler (Brandeis University, USA)12. The Effects of Relative Stable Feedback Loops: Cognitive Science and Historical Explanations, Jesper Sørensen (Aarhus University, Denmark)Part Four: Looking Forward 13. The Road Not Taken: Possible Paths for the Cognitive Science of Religion, Richard Sosis (University of Connecticut, USA)14. Looking Back to Look Forward: From Shannon and Turing to Lawson and McCauley to…?, Justin Lane (Boston University, USA)15. A Neo-Victorian Cognitive Science of Religion, Steven Hrotic (Independent Scholar)Conclusion16. On Keeping Cognitive Science of Religion Cognitive and Cultural, Justin L. Barrett (Fuller Theological Seminary, USA)BibliographyIndex

A series of earnest and frank reflections by scholars, established within [cognitive science of religion], who write passionately about their hopes for the future of the field they have helped to build.