The Cognitive Science of Religion

Cognitive scientists seek to explain the kinds of perceptual and con ceptual representations—including "religious" representations—which the mental processing of sensory input allows, the memory, transmis sion, and transformations of these mental representations, and the rela tionships, historical and potential, among them. Although a cognitive science of religion was first proposed in 1980 (Guthrie), it was not until the following decade that systematically cognitive theories of religion began to be proposed. These theories focused largely on religious rit ual (Lawson-McCauley 1990), religious ideas (Guthrie 1993; Boyer 1994), religious persistence (Whitehouse 1995; 2000), and the relation ship of these practices and ideas to evolutionary theory (Mithen 1996). These theoretical proposals have produced—and are continuing to pro duce—a large number of works that now firmly establish this new field of inquiry as an exciting new approach to the study of religion, (e.g., Barrett 2000, 2004; Boyer 2001; Pyysiainen 2001; McCauley-Lawson 2002; Atran 2002; Pyysiainen-Antttonen 2002; Martin 2003; Slone 2004; Malley 2004; Whitehouse 2004). One of the cognitive theories of religion that has generated a significant amount of commentary and research—and that is the primary focus of this special issue of Method & Theory in the Study of Religion—is that of divergent modes of religiosity, proposed by the British anthropolo gist Harvey Whitehouse (and summarized in this journal by him, 2002). Briefly stated, Whitehouse has identified two different clusters of vari ables that tend to be selected for in processes of religious transmission (Whitehouse 2004). He terms these two modes of religiosity "imagis tic" and "doctrinal". It need be emphasized at the outset that the "imagistic" mode does not refer, in Whitehouse's description, to reli gious traditions that trade in images—a trait of virtually all religions. Rather, "imagistic" is Whitehouse's designation for a convergence of analogical precepts and practices that are transmitted through infre quently performed rituals and are rendered especially salient and mem orable through intense sensory pageantry and heightened emotionality. The dramatic, often traumatic, means of transmission (e.g., by some ini tiation rites) typically occasions a personal and spontaneous exegesis of that knowledge among its recipients as well as an enduring cohesion