Download or read book Rethinking Religion written by E. Thomas Lawson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1993-01-14 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is an ambitious attempt to develop a cognitive approach to religion. Focusing particularly on ritual action, it borrows analytical methods from linguistics and other cognitive sciences. The authors, a philosopher of science and a scholar of comparative religion, provide a lucid critical review of established approaches to religion, and make a strong plea for the combination of interpretation and explanation. Often represented as competitive approaches, they are rather, complementary, equally vital to the study of symbolic systems.