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A ritual is a sequence of activities involving gestures, words, actions, or revered objects. Rituals may be prescribed by the traditions of a community, including a religious community. Rituals are characterized, but not defined, by formalism, traditionalism, invariance, rule-governance, sacral symbolism, and performance.
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Cognitive ecology is the study of cognitive phenomena within social and natural contexts. It is an integrative perspective drawing from aspects of ecological psychology, cognitive science, evolutionary ecology and anthropology. Notions of domain-specific modules in the brain and the cognitive biases they create are central to understanding the enacted nature of cognition within a cognitive ecological framework. This means that cognitive mechanisms not only shape the characteristics of thought, but they dictate the success of culturally transmitted ideas. Because culturally transmitted concepts can often inform ecological decision-making behaviors, group-level trends in cognition are hypothesized to address ecologically relevant challenges.
Bill Jordan, more formally William R. Jordan III, is an American botanist and journalist who has played a leading role in the development and critique of ecological restoration as a means of developing an environmentalism that is philosophically more coherent, psychologically more productive, politically more robust, and ecologically more effective. His critique has had a significant influence on environmentalism in the United States and abroad.
References
- D'Aquili, Eugene G., Charles D. Laughlin and John McManus (1979) The Spectrum of Ritual. New York: Columbia University Press.
- Laughlin, C.D. and I.A. Brady (1978) Extinction and Survival in Human Populations. New York: Columbia University Press.
- Laughlin, Charles D., John McManus and Eugene G. d'Aquili (1990) Brain, Symbol and Experience: Toward a Neurophenomenology of Consciousness. New York: Columbia University Press.
- Rappaport, R.A. (1968) Pigs for the Ancestors. New Haven: Yale University Press.
- Rappaport, R.A. (1979) Ecology, Meaning and Religion. Richmond: North Atlantic Books.
- Rappaport, R.A. (1984) Pigs for the Ancestors. 2nd edition. New Haven: Yale University Press.
- Rappaport, R.A. (1999) Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Rubinstein, R.A., C.D. Laughlin and J. McManus (1984) Science As Cognitive Process. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
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