Towards a Socio-Cognitive Approach to Religious Texts: A Case Study in Indian Epic Literature

Lévi-Strauss here advocates the necessity of the bringing together of two streams of thought in order that there might be progression in the understanding of either, both, or something more than both, of them. This comment resonates with recent developments in the cognitive sciences which have placed far greater emphasis on the role of social interaction in the development of “systematic cognitive structures in dialogical formats” (Tomasello 2003, 214). The aim of this paper is somewhat less grandiose than these broad characterizations of cognitive process and concerns instead the possibilities for, and ramifications of, a closer engagement between the humanities and the cognitive sciences.1 Specifically, it engages with the potential for a creative encounter between approaches to religious texts and certain cognitivist orientations to human society and its technological and expressive output. It is my hope that current thinking in both textual studies and the cognitive sciences might play “tinder” and “spark” to one another in a way that might “shed light on both.”