ABSTRACT
Rituals can provide the attentional clues that can differentiate an experience from the flood of input and can structure that experience in controlled ways. "Cognitive unconscious" refers to the myriad non-conscious functions of the brain, from the regulation of heart rate to, as for Mauss, the generation of and attention to language. "Script" is a term generally used by cognitive scientists to designate cognitive templates for sequences of action; "Schema" is a generic term for cognitive templates that is sometimes used to designate conceptual in contrast to action templates. Anthropologists and historians can apply cognitive theorizing to their data and assess their experimental predictions. The common evolutionary, biological, and cognitive foundations upon which cultural particularities are constructed and constrained, establish a panhuman rule whereby socio-historical differencethe grounds for interesting comparison for Jonathan Z. Smith as for Lvi-Strauss may be measured. These common human capacities abate, in other words, anti-comparative emphases upon ethnographic or historical uniqueness.
