Religion Explained : The Human Instincts That Fashion Gods, Spirits and Ancestors
by Boyer, Pascal
- New
- Paperback
- Condition
- New
- ISBN 10
- 0099282763
- ISBN 13
- 9780099282761
- Seller
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San Diego, California, United States
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About This Item
Synopsis
Formerly at Princeton, King's College, Cambridge and the University of Lyon, Pascal Boyer is Professor of Anthropology at Washington University in St Louis, MissouriWhile human religious practice and belief are extraordinarily varied, they are nevertheless not infinitely so. The varieties of belief have provided generations of anthropologists and religious scholars with material for research; there have been fewer attempts to explore what religious beliefs have in common - and fewer still that have been convincing. Following in the footsteps of Noam Chomsky and Steven Pinker's explorations of what languages have in common beneath their vast superficial variety, Pascal Boyer explores the commonalities of religious belief, bringing the new tools of cognitive science and evolutionary psychology to bear on the ways in which beliefs reflect human needs and the ways in which our minds work. This is no sense an attempt to explain religion away, or to reduce it to simplistic nostrums; Boyer is himself an anthropologist, and rejects almost all the usual obvious, but unsatisfying, explanations for religion, in a book that is certainly ambitious and provocative, but also a rich exploration of this profound and important area of human experience - an area that is almost as universal and central to our shared humanity as our common use of language.
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Details
- Bookseller
- GridFreed LLC (US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- Q-0099282763
- Title
- Religion Explained : The Human Instincts That Fashion Gods, Spirits and Ancestors
- Author
- Boyer, Pascal
- Format/Binding
- Paperback
- Book Condition
- New
- Quantity Available
- 1
- ISBN 10
- 0099282763
- ISBN 13
- 9780099282761
- Publisher
- Vintage Uk
- Place of Publication
- London Etc
- This edition first published
- November 7, 2002
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GridFreed LLC
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GridFreed LLC
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- New
- A new book is a book previously not circulated to a buyer. Although a new book is typically free of any faults or defects, "new"...