Professor Scott Atran
Scott Atran,
Ph.D. is
Adjunct Research Scientist, Research Center for Group Dynamics,
University of Michigan;
Adjunct Professor, Psychology Department, University of Michigan;
Visiting Professor, Ford School of Public Policy;
Presidential Scholar, John Jay College of Criminal Justice; and
Directeur de Recherche, Anthropologie, Centre National de la Recherche
Scientifique, Paris.
Scott’s research and teaching interests are centered in the following
areas:
cognitive and linguistic anthropology, ethnobiology, environmental
decision making, categorization and reasoning, evolutionary psychology,
anthropology of science (history and philosophy of natural history and
natural philosophy); Middle East ethnography and political economy;
natural history of Lowland Maya, cognitive and commitment theories of
religion, terrorism, and foreign affairs.
His books include
Talking to the Enemy: Faith, Brotherhood, and the (Un)Making of
Terrorists,
In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion (Evolution
and
Cognition Series),
The Native Mind and the Cultural Construction of Nature (Life and
Mind:
Philosophical Issues in Biology and Psychology),
Cognitive Foundations of Natural History: Towards an Anthropology of
Science,
Talking to the Enemy: Violent Extremism, Sacred Values, and What It
Means to Be Human, and
Values, Empathy, and Fairness across Social Barriers (Annals of the
New
York Academy of Sciences).
Scott’s papers include
Constraints on a Theory of Hominid Tool Making,
Covert Fragmenta and the Origins of the Botanical Family,
Ordinary Constraints on the Semantics of Living Kinds: A Commonsense
Alternative to Recent Treatments of Natural-Object Terms,
A Question of Honor:
Why the Taliban Fight and What to Do About It,
The Evolution of Religion: How Cognitive
By-Products, Adaptive Learning Heuristics, Ritual
Displays, and Group Competition Generate Deep
Commitments to Prosocial Religions and
Interview with Ramadan Shallah, Secretary General, Palestinian
Islamic
Jihad.
Scott earned his Ph.D. in Anthropology from Columbia
University.
Watch
Sam Harris Vs Scott Atran Enlightenment 2.0,
Scott Atran: Reacting to Terror,
Why Do People Become Terrorists? w/ Author Scott Atran,
Beyond Belief: Enlightenment 2.0 – Scott Atran, and
Scott Atran: The Evolution of Terror Networks.
Visit his
Facebook page.
