Papers on Mimetic Theory: Science

Author: René Girard
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Author: Paul Gifford
Lecture at Saint Andrews University, Nov. 2007
This survey of key notions of mimetic theory sketches out the links between the religious insights of mimetic theory and fundamental concerns of social and physical science, of anthropology and evolutionary theory.

Author: Jean-Pierre Dupuy
Chapter 3 of La Marque du Sacré. Translated into English by Malcolm DeBevoise.
Mimetic Theory has no choice but to confront the emerging and already dominant paradigm that results from the convergence of evolutionary theory, cognitive psychology, and cognitive anthropology. This paradigm is well aware that it can realize its ambition of conquering the vast continent of the humanities and social sciences only on the condition of succeeding first of all in explaining the universal presence of religion in human societies. This paper analyzes how and why religion is indeed the skandalon, the stumbling block, of the paradigm in question.

Author: William Hurlbut
Contagion 4 (1997)
This essay traces the biological bases of mammalian evolution in human interaction; ethology and anthropology are in dialogue over the real needs of group life (imitation and identification) that are indissociable from our ethical concerns.

Author: William Johnsen
William Johnsen, “Frères amis, not Enemies: Serres Between Prigogine and Girard” in Mapping Michel Serres, Niran Abbbas ed. (University of Michigan P, 2005).
This essay focuses on the period when Serres began to write philosophy rather than about it, in relation to mimetic theory and his friendship with Girard.

Author: Scott Garrels

Contagion 12/13 (2006)
This update of recent discoveries in developmental psychology (imitation in earliest human infancy) and neuroscience (mirror neurons) establishes their relevance for mimetic theory.