Cognitive Approaches to Ancient Religious Experience

The proposed network brings together scholars studying ancient Greek and Roman religions, and those using cognitive approaches, to investigate the nature of individual religious experiences, examining how models and data from one discipline can inform and challenge, test and refine those of the other.

Individual religious experience is generally assumed to be hidden, inaccessible within the minds of its subjects making research on it impossible. This is particularly true of the experiences of those in historical periods. In scholarship on ancient religions, this has meant that the debate has become focused on the roles and activities of social groups and external actions, with little idea of how to access the interior experiences of historical subjects.

The cognitive science of religion (CSR) offers an opportunity to cross this barrier. However, it too has limitations: scholars who work with various cognitive approaches are largely concerned with modern, western individuals. Although this research may help to investigate and clarify aspects of contemporary religion in western societies, and may entail claims about the universal nature of humanity's cognitive proclivities, it is nevertheless often untested by historical data, or, often, data from other cultures. Those projects that do attempt to work with historical data tend to take a quantitative approach, rather than trying to apply experimental methodology to examine qualitative data, which involves a change in how scientists think about their subject.

The network aims to bring together many of the theoretical assumptions, methodologies, and results of CSR. However, it aims to proceed beyond cognition in individualistic and mentalistic terms, and expand the understanding of cognition as consisting of individuals in full interaction with culture.

Through two workshops the network will address:

- The value of adopting a historical perspective in the investigation of the cognitive aspects of religious experience, providing scholars who study cognitive approaches to religion invaluable data and case studies to test and refine their findings.

- The value of introducing new cognitive methodologies into historical research, offering scholars of ancient religions new ways to examine the changing individual experiences of historical subjects.

- How cognitive and historical disciplines can collaborate to develop new approaches to, and understandings of religious experience.

A final conference will present findings from the workshops and also promote interaction with scholars of religion in other historical periods, along with invited guests from relevant business, cultural and policy organisations, with the aim of expanding the network and its impact.

Through this collaborative process scholars of both disciplines will be assisted in moving beyond their usual assumptions, gaining new perspectives, developing new questions and approaches to data, working with new evidence and methodologies. As well as helping to forge a common discourse of research, the network aims to contribute to relevant public and policy conversations concerning, for example, the nature and role of religious experience in modern societies, and the place of individual religious experience in modern culture, through the dissemination of its findings.

In academia the study of religion has developed across different disciplines, but frequently in isolation- from both each other and the wider public. This project seeks not only to bring together the findings from different fields of research, and communicate them more broadly in an academic context; but also to disseminate them to a wider audience, shaping popular debate about the nature of religious experience through a variety of channels.

The initial impacts of the network will be educational. In collaboration with The Historical Association, the project will develop teaching materials, including, for example, podcasts, which can be used for teaching an otherwise abstract and conceptually difficult subject at both HE and school-level. This material will be of key interest to school teachers across a range of disciplines, both UK and internationally, but will also be made available to the wider public, through a number of different channels (see Pathways to Impact), leading to wider conversation about the nature of religion, and engagement with some of the latest research in both sciences and arts and humanities.

In the longer term, the network is likely to have impact across a number of areas. By inviting representatives of the cultural, third, business and policy sectors to the final conference, the project will extend the network into those areas and prepare the ground for potential future collaborations.

1. Cultural impacts: We will invite to the final conference representatives from the cultural sector, including museums and galleries, and creative and performing artists:
- Museums and galleries: the project's cognitive approach to ancient data will reveal innovative perspectives on historical artifacts and visual evidence related to religious practice. Such displays on historical material also play a key role in influencing public discourse about the nature of religious experience currently and more generally. The project is already in discussion with the Garstang Museum, Liverpool about the potential for collaboration on a museum display and related event.
- Creative and performing artists: in examining religious experience, the project will explore the role of theatricality and performance, e.g., in ritual and audience reception. Members of the project team work on cognitive approaches to ancient drama, which creates further links for this discussion.

2. Third-sector, business and policy impacts: Individuals who engage with religion and public policy will be invited to the final conference. Ancient data provides an ideal 'neutral territory' for examining contemporary concerns, allowing controversial questions to be raised, and encouraging the investigation of assumptions about human development.
- Faith groups: Both data and methods from this project can provide a shared language about the nature of religious experience, helping to facilitate discussion within and between different groups. The project's emphasis on the personal significance of religious experience, and its cognitive development, means that it will offer meaningful data to those of different faiths.
- Policy-makers, within international, national, or local government and government agencies or regulators who work in fields or with constituencies where religious experience is an important element: the project provides ways to examine contemporary questions about religious experience within a longer timeframe, and in comparative perspective. Its interdisciplinary approach means its insights can offer a basis for informed debate, without the familiar split between 'science' and 'religion', or between believers and non-believers, and help to develop a discourse between disparate groups.