ABSTRACT
Cognitive studies in relation to religion and culture have until recently mostly focused on what the mind “brings to the social world,” but, here in line with our special point of departure, we focus on what the social world brings to the mind, that is, the formative effects that various kinds of cultural knowledge (in narratives, classificatory systems, rituals, institutions and everyday practice) may have on the ways in which minds are made and how they work. This project has become crucial because of recent breakthroughs in the neurocognitive and psychological sciences. Recent insights on the plasticity of the brain and the central role that social experience and culture plays in forming neural networks in the brain have persuaded neuroscientists and psychologists of the need to deal with areas of expertise in the human and social sciences. In other words, we need the help of colleagues from other fields, and they need help from us. It is exactly this interdisciplinarity which is so exciting about the study of cognition and religion more generally, and religious narrativity more specifically. The sense of excitement is enhanced by the fact that in one way or another and within the framework of one discipline or another, we are all trying to grasp the fundamental features of what it means to be human.
