ABSTRACT
Syncretism' is a central category for the modern study of religion, the sense of which remains, nevertheless, anchored in the historical orientation of its nineteenth-century definition. In recent theoretical discussions, syncretism has been understood as the consequence of historical, social, and/or cultural processes to be described. One of the foremost proponents of employing syncretism as a description of ongoing religious histories has been Michael Pye. The only way fully to account for adult representations is to posit some pre-existing cognitive structures, which constrain the learn ability of religious ideas. The issue suggested by cognitive science, in other words, is not a contrast between assumptions about cultures as-historically constructed systems and about cultures as artificial constructs. Although generalizations about similarities among religions may be constructed upon conscious and even intentional representations of similarities, they are most often the products of intuitive and unconscious recognitions.
