Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age [Hardcover]
- Author by Bellah, Robert Neelly
Editorial Reviews
This ambitious book probes our biological past to discover the kinds of lives that human beings have imagined were worth living. Bellah's theory goes deep into cultural and genetic evolution to identify a range of capacities (communal dancing, storytelling, theorizing) whose emergence made religious development possible in the first millennium BCE.
From Publisher
"Religion in Human Evolution" is a work of extraordinary ambition--a wide-ranging, nuanced probing of our biological past to discover the kinds of lives that human beings have most often imagined were worth living. It offers what is frequently seen as a forbidden theory of the origin of religion that goes deep into evolution, especially but not exclusively cultural evolution.
How did our early ancestors transcend the quotidian demands of everyday existence to embrace an alternative reality that called into question the very meaning of their daily struggle? Robert Bellah, one of the leading sociologists of our time, identifies a range of cultural capacities, such as communal dancing, storytelling, and theorizing, whose emergence made this religious development possible. Deploying the latest findings in biology, cognitive science, and evolutionary psychology, he traces the expansion of these cultural capacities from the Paleolithic to the Axial Age (roughly, the first millennium BCE), when individuals and groups in the Old World challenged the norms and beliefs of class societies ruled by kings and aristocracies. These religious prophets and renouncers never succeeded in founding their alternative utopias, but they left a heritage of criticism that would not be quenched.
Bellah's treatment of the four great civilizations of the Axial Age--in ancient Israel, Greece, China, and India--shows all existing religions, both prophetic and mystic, to be rooted in the evolutionary story he tells. "Religion in Human Evolution" answers the call for a critical history of religion grounded in the full range of human constraints and possibilities.
Reviews
- From Publishers Weekly
- In this magisterial effort, eminent sociologist of religion Bellah (Habits of the Heart) attempts nothing less than to show the ways that the evolution of certain capacities among humans provided the foundation for religion. He traces three stages of cultural evolution that give rise to various types of religion. Thus, mimetic culture was primarily gestural and nonverbal; dance might have been one of the earliest forms of such culture. Mythic culture arises as language develops and complex explanatory narratives emerge. Archaic religion evolves out of the capacity for mimesis and myth, but as society becomes more complex, religions attempt to clarify the differences between themselves, to question old narratives, and to call into question the old hierarchies in the name of spiritual and ethical universalism. Within this new theoretic culture, the great axial religions of the ancient Near East, China, Greece, and India combine the capacities for myth and ritual even as they develop the capacity to theorize. Bellah brings his thesis to life by illustrating profusely this development in each type of religion. Those with the stamina to trudge through Bellahs dense prose will be rewarded with a wealth of sparkling insights into the history of religion. (Sept.) Copyright 2011 Reed Business Information.
Quote Reviews
- "Religion in Human Evolution" is not like so many other "science and religion" books, which tend to explain away belief as a smudge on a brain scan or an accident of early hominid social organization. It is, instead, a bold attempt to understand religion as part of the biggest big picture--life, the universe, and everything...One need not believe in intelligent design to look for embryonic traces of human behavior on the lower rungs of the evolutionary ladder. [Bellah's] attempt to do just that, with the help of recent research in zoology and anthropology, results in a menagerie of case studies that provide the book's real innovation. Not only the chimps and monkeys evoked by the word "evolution" in the title, but wolves and birds and iguanas all pass through these pages. Within such a sundry cast, Bellah searches for a commonality that may give some indication of where and when the uniquely human activity of religion was born. What he finds is as intriguing as it is unexpected...Bella
- Bellah's book is an interesting departure from the traditional separation of science and religion. He maintains that the evolving worldviews sought to unify rather than to divide people. Poignantly, it is upon these principles that both Western and Eastern modern societies are now based. What strikes the reader most powerfully is how the author connects cultural development and religion in an evolutionary context. He suggests that cultural evolution can be seen in mimetic, mythical, and theoretical contexts.--Brian Renvall"Library Journal" (08/01/2011)
- Of Bellah's brilliance there can be no doubt. The sheer amount this man knows about religion is otherworldly... Bellah stands in the tradition of such stalwarts of the sociological imagination as Emile Durkheim and Max Weber. Only one word is appropriate to characterize this book's subject as well as its substance, and that is "magisterial."--Alan Wolfe"New York Times Book Review" (10/02/2011)
