Benson Saler

This book describes aspects of the concept of the supernatural from the intellectual history of Euro-American cultures. These samplings shed light on issues in the study of religions and religion rather than attempting to provide either a lineally coherent or exhaustive account of a somewhat fraught and complicated notion. Observations include uses of the term among the ancient Greeks and medieval Christian theologians and 19th- and 20th-century social scientists. This book highlights more recent academics who draw on the cognitive and evolutionary sciences in attempting to make sense of recurrent features of the representations and meta-representations of different cultures. This includes such counter-intuitive notions as “the mysterious” among the Wayuu of Columbia and Venezuela and “vampires” in Europe and North America. These observations are concluded in a final essay – “Toward a Realistic and Relevant Science of Religion” – which presents considered opinions on how we might draw on the cognitive and evolutionary sciences to establish the foundations for a genuinely scientific study of religions and religion. Benson Saler sadly passed away shortly after writing this book. An appreciation of his work, written by Armin W. Geertz, is included in this volume.

This book describes aspects of the concept of the supernatural from the intellectual history of Euro-American cultures. These samplings shed light on issues in the study of religions and religion rather than attempting to provide either a lineally coherent or exhaustive account of a somewhat fraught and complicated notion. Observations include uses of the term among the ancient Greeks and medieval Christian theologians and 19th- and 20th-century social scientists. This book highlights more recent academics who draw on the cognitive and evolutionary sciences in attempting to make sense of recurrent features of the representations and meta-representations of different cultures. This includes such counter-intuitive notions as “the mysterious” among the Wayuu of Columbia and Venezuela and “vampires” in Europe and North America. These observations are concluded in a final essay – “Toward a Realistic and Relevant Science of Religion” – which presents considered opinions on how we might draw on the cognitive and evolutionary sciences to establish the foundations for a genuinely scientific study of religions and religion. Benson Saler sadly passed away shortly after writing this book. An appreciation of his work, written by Armin W. Geertz, is included in this volume.

In the summer of 1947 something mysterious crashed in the New Mexican desert near the town of Roswell. Whether it was an alien spacecraft manned by tiny humanlike beings or--the US government's official explanation--a scientific research balloon has long been a subject of passionate debate. Transcending the believer-versus-skeptic debate, anthropologists Benson Saler and Charles A. Ziegler contend that the Roswell story is best understood as a modern American myth. They show how the story--and its continual retelling--tap into modern fears about the power of technology, the duplicity of the government, and the power of the media. UFO Crash at Roswell also includes physicist Charles Moore's meticulous account of how 1947 experiments to launch balloon-borne radar reflectors may have led to the Roswell UFO myth.

This volume consists of 12 essays published by the author between the years 1997-2007, a thirteenth paper read at a conference in 2006, and a long introduction prepared specifically for the collection. All of the essays deal with epistemological issues attendant on conceptualizing and defining religion, understanding what is likely to be involved in studying and discussing beliefs, and attempting to explain religion and religions by drawing on the contemporary cognitive and evolutionary sciences. The problem of how best to understand and represent the cultural sensitivities of others is addressed by considering the works of three predecessors, Edward Burnett Tylor, Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, and A. Irving Hallowell.

How might we transform a folk category - in this case religion - into a analytical category suitable for cross-cultural research? In this volume, the author addresses that question. He critically explores various approaches to the problem of conceptualizing religion, particularly with respect to certain disciplinary interests of anthropologists. He argues that the concept of family resemblances, as that concept has been refined and extended in prototype theory in the contemporary cognitive sciences, is the most plausible analytical strategy for resolving the central problem of the book. In the solution proposed, religion is conceptualized as an affair of "more or less" rather than a matter of "yes or no," and no sharp line is drawn between religion and non-religion.