Neuromatic, or, a particular history of religion and the brain / John Lardas Modern.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Modern, John Lardas, 1971- author.

Series:

Class 200, new studies in religion

Class 200: new studies in religion

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Brain--Religious aspects.

Brain.

Neurosciences--Religious aspects.

Neurosciences.

Cognitive neuroscience.

Neurosciences--History.

History.

Religion and science.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xv, 426 pages : illustrations (black and white) ; 23 cm.

Other Title:

Particular history of religion and the brain

History of religion and the brain

Religion and the brain

Place of Publication:

Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2021.

Summary:

"The story Modern tells ranges from eighteenth-century brain anatomies to the MRI; from the spread of phrenological cabinets and mental pieties in the nineteenth century to the discovery of the motor cortex and the emergence of the brain wave as a measurable manifestation of cognition; from cybernetic research into neural networks and artificial intelligence to the founding of brain-centric religious organizations such as Scientology; from the deployments of cognitive paradigms in electric shock treatment to the work of Barbara Brown, a neurofeedback pioneer who promoted the practice of controlling one's own brainwaves in the 1970s. What Modern reveals via this grand tour is that our ostensibly secular turn to the brain is bound up at every turn with the 'religion' it discounts, ignores, or actively dismisses. Nowhere are science and religion closer than when they try to exclude each other, at their own peril"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: 1. Saturation

2. Approaching the neuromatic (with a short engineering aside)

3. Blurred lines

4. Cybernetics and the question of religion

5. Cybernetic theses of secularization

6. Poetics

SYNAPTIC OAF: MEASURING RELIGION

1. Thinking about Cognitive Scientists Thinking about Religion

1. False positives

2. The cognitive science of religion

3. The hyperactive agency detection device

4. Distinguishing marks on a screen

5. Breaking the spell

6. Northampton

7. Jonathan edwards, hyperactive agency detector

8. Detecting the life of the brain

9. Agents like us

10. Cheap tricks

SYNAPTIC GAP: THE INFORMATION OF HISTORY

2. Neither Matter nor Spirit: Toward a Genealogy of Information

1. Hard problems

2. Neuromatic piety: an overview

3. Ether and the permeation of the interspaces

4. Emanuel swedenborg, neuroscientist

5. Ghosts of swedenborg

6. Mental slavery and the invention of spirituality

7. The diakka and their earthly victims

8. The mediomaniacal origins of american neurology

9. Prehistories of electroencephalography

10. Brain waves and tremulating information

11. Biofeedback and the experience of correspondence

12. The ontology of information

13. Concluding thoughts on perceptronium

SYNAPTIC GAP: TOO MUCH TOO SOON

3. Imagining the Neuromatic

1. Crash and burn

2. Opening scene from a cybernetic demimonde

3. Elective affinities

4. The mechanics of mediumship

5. Images of an oracle

6. Thought dictated in the absence of all control

7. The cut-up experiments

8. From voodoo death to virology

9. Engrams, auditing, and the appeal of scientology

10. Past lives of the neuromatic brain

11. Exteriorization, or the ritual of being three feet back of your head

12. Break through in grey room

SYNAPTIC GAP: WHITE MACHINERY

4. Histories of Electric Shock Therapy circa 1978

1. Of systems, sex, and secular conversion

2. Moral treatment and heads that differ in shape

3. Gendered electricity in the neuromatic groove

4. The operationalization of napa state hospital

5. Patients' rights

6. The shaving of leonard frank's beard

7. Electric love therapy

8. The business of marriage

9. The union of all contradictory ideas

10. I Watch TV, I watch TV

11. Live from napa state

SYNAPTIC GAP: BELIEF MOLECULES

Conclusion: The Elementary Forms of Neuromatic Life

1. Totemic systems

2. Big science

3. Artificial intelligence.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780226797182

022679718X

9780226799629

022679962X

OCLC:

1227789878

Publisher Number:

99988572831