Pascal Boyer

Pascal Boyer is a French psychologist, anthropologist and philosopher of religion.

Life

Boyer taught in the United Kingdom, the United States and France. He holds an endowed professorship for Individual and Collective Memory of the Henry Luce Foundation at Washington University in St. Louis. Boyer, who worked, among others, Richard Sosis, deals mainly with the tension between religion and culture, the naturalness of religion as well as individual and collective memory. In the book And God created man puts Boyer is his view that the belief in gods give unto men actually meaning in the meaningless. He interprets religion anew by seeking their origin in neurology and psychology. The man has to some extent a penchant for spirituality and his God were to reinvent itself this he was predictive of evolution, since this behavior profitable to him.

Works (selection)

• Barricades Mystérieuses & pièges à pensées. Introduction a l' analyze the épogées fang. Société d' Ethnology, Paris, 1988, ISBN 2-901161-31-6.
• Tradition as Truth and Communication. A Cognitive Description of Traditional Discourse. 1st edition. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1990, ISBN 0-521-37417-0.
• The Naturalness of Religious Ideas. A Cognitive Theory of Religion. University of California Press, Berkeley, 1994, ISBN 0-520-07559-5.
• And man created God. Klett- Cotta, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-608-94032-4 ( translation of the American edition: Religion Explained The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought Basic Books, New York 2001, ISBN 0-465-00695-7. . ).

• Cognitive Aspects of Religious Symbolism. 1st edition. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993, ISBN 0 - 521-43288 -X.