Cognition and Religion

In 2006, the Center began an initiative on Cognition and Religion, sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation. This initiative encompasses a series of lectures and symposia, an ongoing seminar, and a number of empirical projects.

Events planned for 2006-2007 include:

October 20, 2006: 3:00-6:00 p.m. in McCormick Auditorium.
“Neuroscience and Religion" a symposium featuring Richard Davidson, University of Wisconsin; Margaret Kemeny, University of California, San Francisco; Wayne Proudfoot, Columbia University; Clifford Saron, University of California, Davis; and Jonathan Cohen and Leigh Schmidt, Princeton University.

May 11, 2007: Time and location TBA.
"What is Prayer?" a symposium featuring Catherine Bell, Santa Clara University; Sister Mary Margaret Funk, Our Lady of Grace Monastery; David D. Hall, Harvard Divinity School; Carol Zaleski, Smith College; and Albert Raboteau, Princeton University.

The Cognitive and Textual Methods Seminar (click here for the schedule) brings scholars from such scientific fields as cognitive science, artificial intelligence, computer science, and linguistics together with scholars from the social sciences and humanities who study religion. The project will move the scientific study of prayer beyond its current emphasis on the instrumental uses of prayer to a more complete understanding of the form and content of prayer and its role in human societies. The project will break new ground by bringing recent scientific methods of text analysis, based on concepts from the cognitive sciences, to bear on the analysis of prayer.

2006 Princeton Lectures in Cognition and Religion included "Why People Perform Rituals" by Pascal Boyer, Washington University in St. Louis, March 2, 2006; "Ethics, Freedom, and the Death of Rationalism: What Cognitive Science Tells Us About the Culture Wars" by George Lakoff, University of California, Berkeley, April 13, 2006; and “Can God Answer Back?” by Nicholas Wolterstorff, Yale Divinity School. For more information, see our listing of Past Events.

For more information on the Cognition and Religion Initiative please contact Rebekah Massengill.