Religious Evolution and the Axial Age
Bloomsbury Academic (Verlag)
978-1-350-12307-6 (ISBN)
Stephen K. Sanderson draws on ideas from new cognitive and evolutionary psychological theories, as well as comparative religion, anthropology, history, and sociology. He argues that religion is a biological adaptation that evolved in order to solve a number of human problems, especially those concerned with existential anxiety and ontological insecurity.
Much of the focus of the book is on the Axial Age, the period in the second half of the first millennium BCE that marked the greatest religious transformation in world history. The book demonstrates that, as a result of massive increases in the scale and scope of war and large-scale urbanization, the problems of existential anxiety and ontological insecurity became particularly acute. These changes evoked new religious needs, especially for salvation and release from suffering. As a result entirely new religions—Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism—arose to help people cope with the demands of the new historical era.
Stephen K. Sanderson is Research Associate at the Institute for Research on World-Systems at the University of California, Riverside, USA. He is the author of numerous books, most recently Modern Societies: A Comparative Perspective (2015) and Human Nature and the Evolution of Society (2014).
Preface and Acknowledgements
List of Figures
List of Tables
Prologue
1. What Religion Is
2. The Evolutionary Forms of the Religious Life
3. The Religions of the Axial Age
4. Explaining Religion
5. Religion as an Evolutionary Adaptation
6. The Sociocultural Evolution of Religion, 1: The Overall Pattern
7. The Sociocultural Evolution of Religion, 2: The Axial Age
8. Religion Past, Present, and Future
Appendix A. Codes for Stage of Religious Evolution in the Standard Cross-cultural Sample
Appendix B. Ancient Cities and Estimated City Sizes
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Erscheinungsdatum | 17.01.2019 |
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Reihe/Serie | Scientific Studies of Religion: Inquiry and Explanation |
Zusatzinfo | 1 Maps |
Verlagsort | London |
Sprache | englisch |
Maße | 156 x 234 mm |
Gewicht | 445 g |
Themenwelt | Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Religionsgeschichte |
Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie | |
Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie | |
Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie | |
ISBN-10 | 1-350-12307-2 / 1350123072 |
ISBN-13 | 978-1-350-12307-6 / 9781350123076 |
Zustand | Neuware |
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