Methods of cognitive science in historical source criticism: perspectives and challenges

The paper explores the possibilities of using cognitive methodologies in historical science, including the analysis of historical sources. Historical analysis is based on explicit public representations: texts and other historical sources. An important task of historical science is the use of the research methodology, which allows obtaining the most accurate and objective results. Often the significance of the source may not seem so unambiguous and obvious. One of the solutions is an appeal to modern cognitive methodologies, which makes it possible to analyze similar sources that are not sufficiently relevant as the classical narrative history sees them. Also, cognitive methodologies open up the possibility of obtaining fundamentally new results. This study is based on a comparative analysis of theories of cognitive history, cognitive religion and cognitive anthropology. The appeal to the last two directions within the framework of historical science may seem unusual or even superfluous. Yet they are used since they are more theoretically developed in detail and have a wide application practice. Cognitive science of religion in the issue of historical source study is relevant because of the frequent specificity of the sources: often these are texts of religious content or religious implication and meaning. Based on the notion of the formation of religious concepts and behavior, historians will be able to design their subject of research. Accurate and universal theories of religious phenomena allow historians to obtain information that is difficult to obtain by other methods. In addition, historians are given the opportunity to systematize historical facts in a new way. The methodologies of cognitive religion and anthropology have extensive experience in practical application. The paper describes examples of techniques that can be used in historical sciences: the theory of practices and the theory of frames. These theories were created within anthropological and social sciences, but are easily transposed into other cognitive domains, for example, cognitive science of religion and even cognitive history. These methods become not only the subject of historical and theoretical reconstruction, but also an important mechanism for understanding everyday interactions. The application of cognitive methodologies has a number of problems that are noted in the article. Cognitive sciences often claim to be unambiguous and verifiable, but de facto remain in the hands of researchers dependent on subjectivity: their skills, motivation, spheres of interest, etc. Nevertheless, cognitivism makes it possible to obtain results that can not be obtained as a result of the application of other methodologies. The use of cognitive methodology in historical sciences is permissible, but it has its own limitations.

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