The Topographic Mind. A cognitive approach to pilgrimage landscape

16.03.2012 15:15 - 16:45

Jesper Østergaard | Department of Culture and Society, Aarhus University

The theory of „the extended mind“ is a promising approach within the cognitive science of religion. In this theory it is stated that important parts of human cognition are situated in an intersubjective, symbolic and material world. One specific idea is that material objects may become epistemic tools through which cognition is augmented in various ways. I suggest the physical landscape of a pilgrimage site constitutes a repertoire of such epistemic tools and that the mind, in utilizing these landscape tools, is a topographic mind. Because of this mountains are more than the incidental sites of pilgrimage; a bodily interaction with a physical mountain is at the center of pilgrimage and the basis for a cognitive interaction with mythology.

Organiser:
ISTB
Location:
SR 1 TB