tems and their evolutionary background. An excellent presentation of devel-
opmental findings about children's mental capacities is The Scientist in the Crib,
by Alison Gopnik, Patricia Kuhl and Andrew Meltzoff (1999), three specialists
in infant cognition. See Michael Gazzaniga's Conversations in the Neurosciences
(1997) for a good presentation of how specialized brain structures support spe-
cialized function. The essays gathered in The Adapted Mind (Barkow, Cos-
mides and Tooby, 1992) present the main points of an evolutionary view of
cognition, a view that is also presented, in a more reader-friendly way, in
Robert Wright's Moral Animal (1994). The best introduction to social life as
an evolutionary problem is Matt Ridley's The Origins of Virtue (1996).[332]
WHY GODS AND SPIRITS?
Stewart Guthrie's Faces in the Clouds (1993) is a great com-
pendium of anthropomorphic representation in art and religion. It also pre-
sents very good arguments for a psychological interpretation of religious
agency.
WHY DO GODS AND SPIRITS MATTER?
Wilson's The Moral Sense (1993) illustrates the notion that moral
judgements are primarily based on intuitions about the intrinsic qualities of
actions, rather than on deductions from principles. Robert Frank's Passions
Within Reason (1988) is a very entertaining presentation of commitment gad-
gets, passions as useful devices and moral feelings in general. As regards mis-
fortune and witchcraft, Jeanne Favret-Saada's Deadly Words (1980) is among
the best modern studies of the phenomenon.WHY IS RELIGION ABOUT DEATH?
For an excellent survey and explanation of diverse funerary ritu-
als, see the articles in Death and the Regeneration of Life (Bloch and Parry,
1982). Burkert's Homo necans (1983) is a fascinating case study of funerary rit-
ual in Antiquity. The psychology of death-related and other rituals is also the
main topic of Maurice Bloch's Prey Into Hunter (1992).WHY RITUALS?
Anyone interested in what it feels like to perform rituals (and in
how anthropology makes sense of such feelings) should read Caroline
Humphrey and James Laidlaw's Archetypal Actions of Ritual (1993), which fol-
lows a particular case (devotionalpujaamong Jains) but extends the explana-FURTHER READINGS