期刊名称：DISKUS: The Journal of the British Association for the Study of Religions (BASR)
印刷版ISSN：0967-8948
出版年度：2012
卷号：13
页码：49-62
出版社：British Association for the Study of Religions
摘要：In this paper I argue that material artifacts and other environmental structures that are present during religious rituals both enable and restrict forms of action as well as our capabilities to perform these actions. Moreover, these external prompts have far-reaching consequences on the way the ritual action is established and reproduced within cultures. My main focus is on the cognitive dimension of the problem, however I understand this to be in concert with visible and tangible practice. I argue that religious ritual material artifacts enable a whole range of higher cognitive abilities such as memory, decision-making or computing, and I support this claim by the theory of extended and situated cognition as well as by various specific examples from religious worlds and evidence from experimental research. This paper also contains a brief case study that discusses two religious artifacts (prayer beads and mechanical clicker). I argue that each of them supports a different mix of cognitive abilities and as such they are key elements in religious practice and vital elements constituting the practitioner's competence
