Ritual and Embodied Cognition

Human cognition is embodied, embedded, extended, and enactive—the '4E approach'—meaning thinking is shaped by bodily actions, cultural contexts, and interactions with others. This perspective offers new insights for studying religious rituals, which involve a dynamic network of bodies and minds across time and space. Humans are biocultural creatures, and a systematic, scientific study of brain, body, and behavior in rituals is needed. The chapter reviews available evidence and theories developed to understand how bodily actions, thinking, and cultural embeddedness interact in religious contexts.

Study at a glance

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the growing empirical knowledge about the interaction between bodily actions, human thinking, and the cultural embeddedness of human cognition. An approach to ritual based on this expanded view of cognition produces important perspectives and insights for the study of religions. Embodied cognition is a very diverse field and the chapter therefore draws on what is called the ‘4E approach’, i.e. cognition as embodied, embedded, extended, and enactive. Humans are enmeshed in a vast dynamic network of other bodies and minds stretching across the planet and back to the beginnings of time. We are biocultural creatures, in a most concrete sense. What is needed is a systematic, scientific study of brain, body, and behaviour in religious rituals. This chapter will sketch out some of the available evidence and the theories that have been developed to understand the evidence.