Natural Reflections : Human Cognition at the Nexus of Science and Religion.

Smith, Barbara Herrnstein.

ISBN 10: 0300140347 / ISBN 13: 9780300140347

Published by Yale University Press., 2010

About this Item

201 S. Umschlag berieben, sonst gut. N05-7 ISBN 9780300140347 Wichtiger Hinweis: Aufgrund der EPR-Regelung zur Zeit KEIN Versand in EU-Länder. Due to EPR, there is currently no delivery to EU-countries. Sprache: Englisch Gewicht in Gramm: 550.

Seller Inventory # 151439

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Natural Reflections : Human Cognition at the Nexus of Science and Religion.
• Publisher: Yale University Press.
• Publication Date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0300140347
• ISBN 13: 9780300140347
• Binding: 21,514,5 cm. OPappband, OSchu.
• Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included
• Weight: 550 grams
• Seller catalogs:
  • Englischsprachige Literatur

About this title

Synopsis

In this important and original book eminent scholar Barbara Herrnstein Smith describes assesses and reflects upon a set of contemporary intellectual projects involving science religion and human cognition. One which Smith calls "the New Naturalism " is the effort to explain religion on the basis of cognitive science. Another which she calls "the New Natural Theology " is the attempt to reconcile natural-scientific accounts of the world with traditional religious belief. These two projects she suggests are in many ways mirror images--or "natural reflections"--of each other.

 

Examining these and related efforts from the perspective of a constructivist-pragmatist epistemology Smith argues that crucial aspects of belief--religious and other--that remain elusive or invisible under dominant rationalist and computational models are illuminated by views of human cognition that stress its dynamic embodied and interactive features. She also demonstrates how constructivist understandings of the formation and stabilization of knowledge--scientific and other--alert us to similarities in the springs of science and religion that are elsewhere seen largely in terms of difference and contrast.

 

In Natural Reflections Smith develops a sophisticated approach to issues often framed only polemically. Recognizing science and religion as complex distinct domains of human practice she also insists on their significant historical connections and cognitive continuities and offers important new modes of engagement with each of them.

 

About the Author

Barbara Herrnstein Smith is Braxton Craven Professor of Comparative Literature and Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Science and Cultural Theory at Duke University and Distinguished Professor of English at Brown University. She is the author of Belief and Resistance: Dynamics of Contemporary Intellectual Controversy and Scandalous Knowledge: Science, Truth and the Human.