Description
Book SynopsisThe contributions in this book all concern the Building Block Approach to the study of religions as proposed and explored by Professor Ann Taves (University of California, Santa Barbara) during the last 30 years. This approach suggests that analysis of and explanations for complex cultural phenomena such as religion should entail dividing these phenomena into “the constituent parts that interact to produce them”, in terms of basic cognitive, psychological and biological proc-esses. In this way, the approach opens up a path to achieving consil-ience between the humanistic, behavioural and natural sciences. The book provides a short and user-friendly introduction to the Building Block Approach suitable for use in the undergraduate classroom as well as by graduate and more advanced scholars. The book opens with a lengthy introduction by Ann Taves and Egil Asprem (Stockholm University, Sweden) outlining the Building Block Approach and its rele-vance for the study of religions. The introduction is followed by seven responses, comments and critiques that identify pros and cons of the approach from different perspectives and areas of study within the larger field of the study of religions. In the concluding chapter, Taves and Asprem provide their responses to the comments and critiques raised.
Table of ContentsPreface By Way of Introduction Goeran Larsson, Andreas Nordin and Jonas Svensson 1. The Building Block Approach: An Overview Ann Taves, University of California, Santa Barbara, and Egil Asprem, Stockholm University 2. Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Analysing the Reception of and Debate over the Building Block Approach Goeran Larsson 3. Fantastic Stories, Emotions, and Ancient Religions: Open Questions and Ideas in Conversation with the Building Block and Worldviews Ap-proach Laura Feldt, University of Southern Denmark 4. Counterintuitive Supernaturalism as a Building Block of Religious Dream Imagery Andreas Nordin 5. Invisible Hands and Sacred Unicorns: `Occulture' as a Schema for Supernatural Ascriptions in the Millennial Generation Ingela Visuri, Soedertoern University 6. Qur'ans through the Lens of Moral Foundations: An Eplorative Study of Qur'an Transaltions in a Building Block Framework Jonas Svensson 7. Computing Consilience: How Modeling and Simulation can Contrib-ute to Worldview Studies F. LeRon Shults, University of Agder, Kristiansand 8. Comments and Reflections Ann Taves and Egil Asprem
