Blog | OCCULT MINDS | Esotericism as Cognition and Culture

26 Aug

Occult Minds in Sweden

The Occult Minds project is relocating – again! As reported back in February, funding for the original postdoc project at UCSB ran out last year. The research that it seeded, however, will continue to bear fruit for quite some time....
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14 Aug

Building Blocks of Human Experience – website launched

A big part of my collaboration with Ann Taves at UCSB focused on developing the “building block approach” to complex cultural concepts. We have both published on this over the past few years (see Taves 2015, Asprem 2015, Taves and...
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20 Feb

Project Update and Relocations

New office at NTNU, Trondheim, Norway. Not exactly the Californian riviera.

My postdoctoral period at UCSB ended this past December. For the time being, I have relocated to the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), where, among other research duties (I’m co-editing a big handbook on religion and conspiracy theories), ...
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24 Oct

Why fear the history of science? A brief response to Don Wiebe

This post was first published on Heterodoxology, Oct. 23, 2015. I am more used to being labelled a “scientistic reductionist” than an “anti-science relativist”. While neither is particularly accurate, I was certainly surprised to see Don Wiebe review my book,...
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22 Aug

Secrecy, cognition, and building blocks in Erfurt

This coming week, religion scholars from all over the world descend upon Erfurt, Germany, for the quinquennial conference of the International Association for the History of Religion (IAHR). I am writing this post from the comfort of a Deutsche Bahn...
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13 Jul

Western Esotericism and Cognition at AAR

The European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism has put together a panel for the next American Academy of Religion meeting (which takes place in Atlanta) on the topic of “Western Esotericism and Cognition”. The details made available in...
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10 Jul

Forthcoming publications: reverse engineering, building blocks, and event cognition

I am happy to announce that two publications related to the Occult Minds project have been accepted for publication in top religious studies journals over the past week. The first of these, “Experience as Event,” is a co-authored article with...
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5 May

Aries Special Issue on Esotericism and the Cognitive Science of Religion – CfP

Together with Markus Altena Davidsen (Leiden University), I am setting up a special issue of Aries on “Esotericism and the Cognitive Science or Religion”. At this stage we are looking for abstracts from people who might be interested in contributing...
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12 Apr

How does new age literature cherry-pick its science? A cognitive approach

Science is prestige. Many new religious groups know this very well, and desire to have their spiritual claims vindication by Science. This is especially the case for esoteric new religions, which often owe their theological foundations to Theosophy and other...
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9 Feb

Possible panel on esotericism and cognition at AAR 2015

The European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism (ESSWE) is hoping to arrange a panel on cognitive approaches to esotericism at the upcoming American Academy of Religion (in Atlanta, November 2015). The deadline for this is extremely tight (this...
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