RT Article
T1 The future of the past: the history of religions and cognitive historiography
JF Religio
VO 20
IS 2
SP 155
OP 171
A1 Martin, Luther H. 1937-
LA English
PB Společnost
YR 2012
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1743816758
AB The proposal for a scientific study of religions (Religionswissenschaft) was born of the scientific impulse that swept Europe from the mid-nineteenth century and that gave birth to the study of history itself as a scientific and autonomous discipline. Increasingly, however, historians of religion abandoned historical methods altogether and the study of religion became associated with an a historical approach in which "history of religions" became a synonym for assembling a phenomenological corpus of truncated and decontextualized cultural data, the temporality of which was disregarded in favor of claims to their being manifestations of a sui generis sacrality. A history of religions, informed by the insights of the new cognitive sciences, can draw upon well-founded theory that can supplement and provide correctives to traditional historiographical tools. Nevertheless, the weight of the 150 history of the study of religion suggests that the future of the study of religion will inevitably differ little from that of its past.
K1 Religionswissenschaft
K1 Cognitive Historiography
K1 Cognitive Science
K1 evolutionary theory
K1 historiographical theory
K1 Historiography
K1 scientific study of religion