This book argues that religion can and must be reconciled with science. Combining adaptive and cognitive approaches, it is a comprehensive analysis of religion’s evolutionary significance, and its inextricable interdependence with language. It is also a detailed study of religion’s main component, ritual, which constructs the conceptions that we take to be religious and therefore central in the making of humanity’s adaptation. The text amounts to a manual for effective ritual, illustrated by examples drawn from a range of disciplines.
Author(s): Roy A. Rappaport
Edition: 1
Year: 1999
Language: English
Pages: 559
Table of Contents......Page 10
Foreword Keith Hart......Page 15
Preface......Page 22
1 Introduction......Page 25
The evolution of humanity......Page 27
Adaptation......Page 29
The symbol......Page 31
The great inversion......Page 33
The lie......Page 35
Alternative......Page 41
2 The ritual form......Page 47
Ritual defined......Page 48
The logical entailments of the ritual form......Page 50
Ritual and formal cause......Page 51
Form and substance in ritual......Page 53
The first feature of ritual: encoding by other than performers......Page 56
The second feature: formality......Page 57
The third feature: invariance (more or less)......Page 60
The fourth feature: performance (ritual and other performance forms)......Page 61
The fifth feature: formality (vs. physical efficacy)......Page 70
Ritual as communication......Page 74
Self-referential and canonical messages......Page 76
Symbols, indices, and the two streams of messages......Page 78
Appendix......Page 82
3 Self-referential messages......Page 93
On levels of meaning......Page 94
Variation and indexicality in the Maring ritual cycle......Page 98
Index, icon and number in the Maring ritual cycle......Page 101
Natural indices in the Maring cycle......Page 104
Ordinal and cardinal messages......Page 106
Quantification and the substantial representation of the incorporeal......Page 108
The digital representation of analogic processes......Page 110
The binary aspect of ritual occurrence......Page 113
Ritual occurrence and the articulation of unlike systems......Page 121
Ritual occurrence and buffering against disruption......Page 125
4 Enactments of meaning......Page 131
The physical and the meaningful......Page 132
Speech acts......Page 137
The special relationship between rituals and performativeness......Page 139
Ritual’s first fundamental office......Page 141
Acceptance, belief, and conformity......Page 143
Performativeness, metaperformativeness, and the establishment of convention......Page 148
Ritual and daily practice in the establishment of convention......Page 150
The morality intrinsic to ritual’s structure......Page 156
Ritual and myth, and drama......Page 158
Ritual as the basic social act......Page 161
5 Word and act, form and substance......Page 163
Substantiating the non-material......Page 165
Special and mundane objects......Page 168
Acts and agents......Page 169
Predication and metaphor......Page 171
Ritual words......Page 175
The reunion of form and substance......Page 176
The union of form and substance as creation......Page 179
Ritual, creation and the naturalization of convention......Page 188
6 Time and liturgical order......Page 193
St. Augustine, St. Emile, time and the categories......Page 194
Temporal experience and public order......Page 199
Succession, division, period and interval......Page 201
Temporal principles......Page 205
The grounds of recurrence......Page 212
Schedules and societies......Page 214
The temporal organization of activities......Page 217
Regularity, length and frequency......Page 220
Sequence and space......Page 233
Time out of time......Page 240
Tempo and consciousness......Page 244
Tempo, temporal regions and time out of time......Page 246
Frequency and bonding strength......Page 249
Coordination, communitas, and neurophysiology......Page 250
Eternity......Page 254
Myth and history......Page 257
The innumerable versus the eternal......Page 258
8 Simultaneity and hierarchy......Page 260
The Yu Min Rumbim......Page 261
Language and liturgy......Page 275
Analysis vs. performance......Page 277
Ritual representations and hyperreality......Page 281
Mending the world......Page 286
The hierarchical dimension of liturgical orders......Page 287
Sanctity defined......Page 301
Sanctity as a property of discourse......Page 305
The ground of sanctity......Page 307
Axioms and Ultimate Sacred Postulates......Page 311
Sanctity, heuristic rules, and the basic dogma......Page 314
Sanctity, unquestionableness, and the truth of things......Page 317
Divinity, truth, and order......Page 321
The truths of sanctity and deutero-truth......Page 328
10 Sanctification......Page 337
Sanctified expressions......Page 341
Falsehood, alienation, sanctity and adaptation......Page 343
Major variations in sanctification......Page 348
Sanctity, community, and communication......Page 350
The sacred, the sanctified, and comparative invariance......Page 352
11 Truth and order......Page 368
Logos......Page 370
Logoi......Page 377
12 The numinous, the Holy, and the divine......Page 395
Religious experience and the numinous in William James, Rudolph Otto, and Emile Durkheim......Page 398
Order, disorder, and transcendence......Page 405
Grace......Page 406
Grace and art......Page 408
Ritual learning......Page 412
Meaning and meaningfulness again......Page 415
Belief......Page 419
The notion of the divine......Page 420
Illusion and truth......Page 423
The foundation of humanity......Page 428
13 Religion in adaptation......Page 430
Adaptation defined again......Page 432
Adaptation as the maintenance of truth......Page 434
Self-regulation......Page 435
Religious conceptions in human adaptation......Page 438
The structure of adaptive processes......Page 443
The structural requirements of adaptiveness......Page 446
Hierarchical organization of directive, value, and sanctity......Page 449
Sanctity, vacuity, mystery, and adaptiveness......Page 451
The Cybernetics of the Holy......Page 453
The natural and the unnatural......Page 462
Sanctity and specificity......Page 464
Oversanctification, idolatry, and maladaptation......Page 465
Adaptive truth and falsity......Page 467
Idolatry and writing......Page 468
Sanctity, power, and lies of oppression......Page 470
Breaking the holy and diabolical lies......Page 471
Inversion in the order of knowledge......Page 473
Humanity’s fundamental contradiction......Page 475
Dissonance between law and meaning......Page 477
Post-modern science and natural religion......Page 480
Notes......Page 486
References......Page 523
A......Page 543
C......Page 544
D......Page 546
F......Page 547
H......Page 548
J......Page 549
L......Page 550
M......Page 551
O......Page 552
P......Page 553
R......Page 554
S......Page 555
T......Page 557
W......Page 558
Z......Page 559
