ABSTRACT
The conflict between interpretative and social scientific approaches has, of course, persisted in both the academic study of religion and historiography more broadly. However, while aspects of this conflict reflects a basic disagreement on the epistemology and even ontology of historical facts, part of the conflict can be understood as a simple reflection of different scholarly endeavors. This rapprochement between historiography and social science has been so successful that Donald Wiebe can discuss and criticize evolutionary psychology's understanding of social science, when he in fact more or less solely addresses its relation to historical explanations. This chapter discusses the use of cognitive theorizing when explaining particular historical events, that is, to the question of how cognitive science can inform historical inquiries. In fact, it can be argued that it addresses the level of science itself as a practice of knowledge expansion and transmission that has stabilized over time due to a number of constraining features.
