Pascal Boyer

Pascal Robert Boyer is a Franco-American cognitive anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist, mostly known for his work in the cognitive science of religion. He studied at université Paris-Nanterre and Cambridge, and taught at the University of Cambridge for eight years, before taking up the position of Henry Luce Professor of Individual and Collective Memory at Washington University in St. Louis, where he teaches classes on evolutionary psychology and anthropology. He was a Guggenheim Fellow and a visiting professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara and the University of Lyon, France. He studied philosophy and anthropology at University of Paris and Cambridge, with Jack Goody, working on memory constraints on the transmission of oral literature. Boyer is a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Pascal Robert Boyer is a Franco-American cognitive anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist, mostly known for his work in the cognitive science of religion. He studied at université Paris-Nanterre and Cambridge, and taught at the University of Cambridge for eight years, before taking up the position of Henry Luce Professor of Individual and Collective Memory at Washington University in St. Louis, where he teaches classes on evolutionary psychology and anthropology. He was a Guggenheim Fellow and a visiting professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara and the University of Lyon, France. He studied philosophy and anthropology at University of Paris and Cambridge, with Jack Goody, working on memory constraints on the transmission of oral literature. Boyer is a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. ==Work== Pascal Boyer studies how human biases and cognitive faculties have resulted in or encouraged cultural phenomena. He advocates the idea that human evolution resulted in specialized capacities that guide our social relations, culture, and predilections toward religious beliefs. Boyer and others propose that these cognitive mechanisms make the acquisition of “religious” themes, like concepts of spirits, ghosts, ancestors or gods, highly transmissible within a community. Boyer has conducted long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Cameroon, where he studied the transmission of Fang oral epics and its traditional religion. Most of his later work consists of an experimental study of cognitive capacities underlying cultural transmission. He also conducted studies on supernatural concepts and their retention in memory and a general description of cognitive processes involved in the transmission of religious concepts. More recently, he has written on the concept of Folk economics, which proposes that evolved cognitive biases play an important role in how laypeople view the economy. ==Books== Cognitive Aspects Of Religious Symbolism. Edited by Pascal Boyer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1992. Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought (2001) Basic Books. . Translated into Greek as Και ο Άνθρωπος Έπλασε τους Θεούς, by Dimitris Xygalatas and Nikolas Roubekas ( ). Translated into Polish as “I człowiek stworzył bogów… Jak powstała religia?” ( ). Translated into Russian as "Объясняя религию. Природа религиозного мышления" ( ) Memory in Mind and Culture. Edited by Pascal Boyer and James V. Wertsch. New York: Cambridge University Press. 2009. The Fracture of an Illusion: Science and the Dissolution of Religion. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht August 23, 2010. Minds Make Societies, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018 ( ). ==See also== Evolutionary origin of religions Evolutionary epistemology Evolutionary psychology Faith and rationality Memetics Relationship between religion and science Cognitive science of religion Evolutionary psychology of religion Cognitive anthropology Folk economics ==Notes and references== ==External links== Boyer's website “Why Is Religion Natural?”, Skeptical Inquirer, Volume 28.2, March/April 2004 Book review: Religion Explained, by Pascal Boyer

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