Böcker av Pascal Boyer

Do they have features in common and why does religion persist in the face of science? Pascal Boyer shows how experimental findings in cognitive science, evolutionary biology and cultural anthropology are now providing precise answers to these general questions, and providing, for the first time, real answers to the question: Why do we believe?

A watershed book that masterfully integrates insights from evolutionary biology, genetics, psychology, economics, and more to explore the development and workings of human societies

The main theme of this treatise is that important aspects of religious representation are constrained by the human mind. The author uses experimental results from developmental psychology to explain why certain religious representations are acquired and stored in the brain.

Tradition as Truth and Communication deals particularly with oral communication and focuses on the privileged role of licensed speakers and the ritual contexts in which certain aspects of tradition are characteristically transmitted. Drawing on cognitive psychology, Dr Boyer proposes a set of general hypotheses to be tested by ethnographic field research.