Browsing All Posts filed under »anthropology«

Secularisation in Brno

December 26, 2010

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My usual after-conference report has been somewhat delayed by a little thing called Christmas. The turkey, cake and other comestibles are now where they should be, however: So there is a chance to write a few words about the meeting in Brno. The conference’s title was almost as long as the conference itself – Twenty […]

Videos from the Religious Ritual, Culture and Cognition conference

August 1, 2010

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Back in May 2008 took place a conference that I dearly wish I had attended, the topic of it  being very much central to my own work, i.e. cognitive approaches to religious and magical ritual. The conference was organised by Armin Geertz and Jesper Sorensen and took place at the Religion, Cognition and Culture research […]

Aarhus talk

June 9, 2010

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At the end of last month I went for a couple of days to Aarhus to give a talk on how the magic/religion distinction can be explained in terms of a dual inheritance model of religion. The Religion, Cognition and Culture people there also know Christophe Heintz and we set it up so that both […]

ESF funding application

May 10, 2010

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It’s another of those cases where I wish I were more superstitious. I have submitted an application to the European Science Foundation for funding to organise a workshop on dual inheritance models of religion and now have to wait till November to find out if my application was successful. The attraction to cross my fingers […]

Loose ends in Brno

November 10, 2009

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Last week I was at a small, two-day conference on the cognitive science of religion in Brno. There were only twenty-something people there, mostly from the Czech Republic, Slovakia or Poland, The only exception were the two key speakers, Armin Geertz and Jesper Sorensen, who were from Aarhus in Denmark. Most of the papers were […]

Fixation in Teorema

June 12, 2009

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The long version of “Fixation of superstitious beliefs” should be coming out in Teorema relatively soon. It develops the ideas contained in the short version that I put on this blog a while ago. I’m linking to a draft version of the long article in pdf format: My aim in this paper is to sketch […]

Cultural success of ineffective treatments

May 6, 2009

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Apart from the work on emulation and imitation mentioned in the previous post, at least two other things from St. Andrews struck me as highly relevant to own research. The first of these was a poster by Tanaka, Kendal and Laland on how non-effective medical treatments might be perpetuated. Since I’ve returned, I’ve had the […]

Off to St. Andrews, with some trepidation

April 2, 2009

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This Sunday I’m off to the European Human Behaviour and Evolution Conference in St. Andrews. It’ll be the first time that I go to a conference on human behaviour and I am sure that I will have a lot to learn. In true science conference fashion, I will not be giving a talk but putting […]

St Andrews is nicer anyway

February 3, 2009

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Received a reply from the Venice Summer School for Science and Religion. Their conclusion was that my “proposal does not fit well the direction the school plans to venture”. Given that I was going to argue that religious beliefs are basically exapted superstitions, I can’t say that I disagree. I would have been fairly surprised […]

Bristol sounds like a nice place in September

December 14, 2008

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At the very least, they keep organising very interesting conferences. This one, in particular, goes right to the top of my list of ones I’d like to attend next year: Evolution, Co-operation and Rationality Conference, September 18-20th 2009 Confirmed Speakers: Cristina Bicchieri, Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania; Ken Binmore, Economics, University College London, University of Bristol; […]

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