Adam Barnett
Bringing Big Data to Religious History
The world’s first qualitative and quantitative encyclopedia of religious history populated primarily by experts brings a big data approach to religion.
Rituals, Beliefs, and Religious Minds – May 9th-14th, 2018
Future Directions on the Evolution of Rituals, Beliefs and Religious Minds workshop being held May 9th to 14th, in Erice, Sicily, Italy
The Science of Religion Online Course
A new massive open online course from UBC on the science of religion is combining science and the humanities to discover why some of us believe.
ASU Center for Evolution & Medicine – Mind-Body Dualism in Ancient China
It is commonly claimed that mind-body dualism is entirely foreign to China—or “the East” more generally. This talk will draw on a wide variety of evidence to debunk this Orientalist myth of holism, including archeological findings, traditional close reading of texts, novel large-scale textual analysis techniques, and work in contemporary evolutionary anthropology and cognitive science. […]
How to Do Things With Millions of Words – November 2016
TWO PUBLIC LECTURES ON DIGITAL HUMANITIES co-presented by Green College (UBC), The Early Modern Conversions Project (McGill University) and the Cultural Evolution of Religion Consortium (UBC) THE DIGITAL HUMANITIES: SOME CONTEXTS, CONCEPTS AND INITIATIVES Ray Siemens, Distinguished Professor in the Faculty of Humanities, University of Victoria Coach House, Green College, 6201 Cecil Green Park Road […]
The Power of Ritual – Dimitris Xygalatas – TedXAthens
From fire-walking to meditation, and from graduation ceremonies to wine toasting, rituals are everywhere. But what purpose do they serve? Dimitris Xygalatas combines anthropology, science, and technology to answer this question. Dr. Dimitris Xygalatas is an experimental anthropologist who specializes in the study of ritual behaviour. His research focuses on the application of scientific methods and […]
Moralistic gods, supernatural punishment and the expansion of human sociality
Benjamin Grant Purzycki & CERC in Nature Belief in moralistic, punitive gods that take an interest in human affairs may have facilitated the expansion of human societies, finds a study published in Nature this week. Several theories have been invoked to explain the expansion of human cooperation and societal complexity, which has been taking place since the origins […]