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Replies Causal holism in the evolution of religious ideas: A reply to Pascal Boyer BRIAN E. MALLEY In my estimation, few scholars have contributed as much in recent years to our understanding of religion as has Pascal Boyer. It is therefore the great- est pleasure to receive his critique of a programmatic essay of mine, and to have opportunity to respond to it. 1. Recapitulation Religious systems display remarkable regularity: scholars, learning about a third or fourth tradition, somehow find the new religion remarkably famil- iar in its institutions and dynamics. The source of this sense of familiarity is the organization of religious systems, an organization that titillates our in- tuitions while resisting clear definition. Thus we are haunted by the famili- arity of strange spirits. In "Explaining Order in Religion" (1995), I argued that an under- standing of these common forms of organization will require both psycho- logical and systems-level theorizing about religious systems. Recent work in the psychology of religion identifies common cognitive processes that, oper- ating in diverse cultural environments, give rise to limited variation among religious ideas and practices. Such psychological theory is not enough, how- ever : the simultaneous activity of thousands of
Method & Theory in the Study of Religion – Brill
Published: Jan 1, 1997
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