Description of the project
Religion, Cognition and Culture
A New Project in Aarhus, Denmark
The Laboratory on Theories of Religion at the Department of the Study of Religion has been awarded a four-year project on “Religion, Cognition and Culture” by the Faculty of Theology at the University of Aarhus. The Chairman is Professor Armin W. Geertz and the Coordinator is Associate Professor Jeppe Sinding Jensen.
This new project developed out of a preliminary project called “Religious Narrative, Cognition and Culture” which was conducted during 2003-2004. During that period we held a number of conferences, workshops, graduate courses and Ph.D. courses designed to explore and bring into contact theories and approaches from the humanities and social sciences (particularly narratology, semiotics, literary theory, linguistics, philosophy, archaeology, history of religions, theology, social psychology, anthropological psychology, and psychological anthropology) and theories and approaches in what can broadly be called neurocognitive studies (primarily the neurosciences, clinical psychology, cultural psychology, cognitive anthropology, cognitive linguistics, developmental psychology and evolutionary psychology). Starting with a small group of scholars of religion at our laboratory, we soon expanded into a national and international network of some 135 scholars from a wide variety of disciplines in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences who have contributed creatively to our explorations.
One of the most important insights gained in that project was that cognition is not exclusively about what goes on in the head, but more importantly about what goes on in the social and intersubjective dynamics between individuals. In other words, language, social intercourse, and bodily communication play a formative role in cognition. This basic assumption has gained increasing support from a wide range of experimental data. Some of the strongest exponents of this assumption are distinguished neuroscientists, such as Nobel prize winner in medicine, Eric R. Kandel, Nobel prize winner in physiology and medicine, Gerald M. Edelman, clinical psychologist Daniel J. Siegel, and a growing body of experimental and developmental psychologists. A new discipline is even emerging within the ranks of neuroscience called “social cognitive neuroscience”. What they have empirically discovered is something that social psychologists have been claiming for the past one hundred years or so, namely that human relationships have a direct influence on the development of the brain, not only during the first few years of life but throughout our lives. This fact raises fundamental questions about the relationship between neurobiology, subjective experience, interpersonal relationships and culture which earlier approaches to the cognitive study of religion and culture have not sufficiently addressed.
Our preliminary project convinced us that narrative and the communication of symbolic systems through material and intellectual culture are not just “stories”, and that they are certainly not simply epiphenomenal, rather they play a formative role in integrating diverse processes and regions of the brain and body. We also noted that religion is a very rich resource in manipulating the mechanisms connecting individual brains and bodies with social brains and bodies. A clear consequence of these insights is that there is a growing need for experts in language, culture and religion to work cooperatively together with neuroscientists and experimental psychologists in exploring the human condition. This fact in itself is good news for the humanities and social sciences. One of our fundamental assumptions is that only through cooperation with specialists in each their own field will we be able to enrich our own specialist areas and subjects. We cannot all become neurologists or experimental psychologists, nor can we expect our colleagues in the neurosciences to become philosophers, linguists or schoolars of religion (even though there are in fact a number of neuroscientists who are highly competent philosophers, linguists and scholars of religion). The point is that we need each other, and our strategy must be inclusive rather than safeguarding boundaries.
The current four-year project has expanded its program to the exploration of religion in general as a formative factor in cognition and culture. We plan on inviting guest researchers to spend time with us; we hope to fund a few doctoral students and to continue giving courses and workshops for graduate students; we wish to develop cooperative ventures with colleagues in a variety of disciplines in the humanities, social sciences and the natural sciences; we will host four international conferences; and we will try to keep you better informed through e-mail and the website (which is currently being revamped) on our activities.
Two publications are already in the works, one in Danish and one in English, from our two-year project. We hope that the up-coming conferences will provide stimulating papers for future publications.
Up-coming conferences in Aarhus:
1. “Origins of Religion, Cognition and Culture” – January 5-7, 2006. This conference will examine recent insights in cognitive studies of religion, evolutionary psychology, cognitive archaeology, neurocognition, ethology and cognitive linguistics on early ritual behaviour, the development of symbolic competence, the role of material culture, the role of written language and abstract thought in the development of religious systems, the rise of symbolic identities and so on. Further information and a call for papers will be sent out shortly, but please take note of the dates.
2. “Symbolization in Religion, Cognition and Culture” – 2006, date to be decided. This conference will explore recent studies of memory, representation and symbolization in the brain, language, symbolic systems and in religious narrative and action. It will also seek to delineate the formative role religious narrative and action have in cognitive development, cultural competence and individual and collective identities.
3. “Ritual Behaviour in Religion, Cognition and Culture” – 2007, date to be decided. One of the keys to understanding religion and cognition is ritual behaviour. The focus will be on neurological, biological and psychological processes as well as insights gained from ethology, and studies in semantics and social dynamics. A wide range of phenomena play a role here such as the symbolic codes, emotional and somatic factors, social functions and biochemical processes activated by ritual behaviour.
4. “Meaning in Religion, Cognition and Culture” – 2008, date to be decided. Our final conference will attempt to deal with perhaps the most central problem in religion, cognition and culture, namely meaning. This is not a new subject. Like the related topic of consciousness, meaning has been one of the main subjects of philosophy, linguistics, psychology and social psychology, anthropology and the study of religion throughout the histories of those disciplines. The difference here is that new methods and insights from the neurosciences allow us to explore the problem of meaning which is at the core of all human communication. We now have unprecedented possibilities in delineating the relationships between language, mind and body which will allow us to gain some insight into the conditions necessary for the formation of perception and cognition. Religions are hugely complex instruments of intentionality and meaning-production and fundamental to distributed, social and collective consciousness.
Please consider this communiqué to be an open invitation to all of you to participate in our conferences and to help us develop bilateral, cooperative projects and activities. We hope that established scholars will encourage their graduate and doctoral students to interact with us, and we hope that our students can interact with you.
For those who are not on our list, please send us a mail with your data and interests, and we will make sure that you are on our up-date list.
We look forward to stimulating exchanges with you!
Yours truly,
Armin W. Geertz ( awg@teo.au.dk ) and Jeppe Sinding Jensen ( jsj@teo.au.dk )
Laboratory on Theories of Religion,
Department of the Study of Religion,
University of Aarhus, Denmark