Wet auto-da-fés and cognitive readings

From the past two hundred years of scholarly endeavour in the study of religion, we have all become acquainted with a profusion of innovative hypotheses concerning the origin and essence of religion. In the course of theoretical, methodological, even political, progress, most of these ideas were dismissed as unwarranted — historically, psychologically, ethically, gender-wise and so forth. However, academic turns and tides unfortunately often assume the rhetorical form of what could be called “wet auto-da-fés” (i.e. throwing a lot of babies out with the bathwater). Although I take cognitive studies to belong to one of the most promising approaches in the academic study of religion today, I am also a staunch believer that it is usually worthwhile to re-read and recycle its precursors. To be sure, not just for the sake of erudite namedrop-ping, genealogical awe, or an Olympic vista of alterations and continuities, but for the sake of genuine re-exploration. As Victor Turner put it: