Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: New Books in Anthropology
Episode: Bryan Rennie, "An Ethology of Religion and Art: Belief as Behavior" (Routledge, 2020)
Description: Drawing from sources including the ethology of art and the cognitive science of religion, An Ethology of Religion and Art: Belief as Behavior (Routledge, 2020) proposes an improved understanding of both art and religion as behaviors developed in the process of human evolution. Looking at both art and religion as closely related, but not identical, behaviors a more coherent definition of religion can be formed that avoids pitfalls such as the Eurocentric characterization of religion as belief or the dismissal of the category as nothing more than false belief or the product of scholarly invention. The book integrates highly relevant ins...