Of Gods and Man: The Biocognitive Turn in Religious Studies

This thesis surveys and analyzes the biocognitive turn in Religious Studies over the last decade, which is characterized by a rise in cognitive and evolutionary accounts of religious beliefs and practices. Using Michel Foucault's archaeological method, I analyze three key discourses--evolutionary and cognitive explanations of religion, sui generis defenses of religion as irreducible by science, and inaugural projects for streamlining Religious Studies--with attention to how they mobilize a set of shared intellectual categories and presuppositions. Central to all of these biocognitive discourses, I argue, is Foucault's analytic of finitude, or the epistemological framing of Man as both an object of knowledge and a subject who knows.Master of Art