The dissemination of divination in roman republican times

divination. At the same time the operators and interpreters of divination suffered a similar lack of
prestige, because prestige came to be distributed according to the hierarchy of the Christian
church and not according to the hierarchy of offices in the Roman Empire. Given equation 1 in
Chapter 9 the credibility value decreases and given equation 4, the prediction is that the
probability of survival decreases. Although more work needs to be done to substantiate this
claim, it points to a possible answer.
In this light it can be seen that the application of cognitive theory to historical material has
been fruitful for the historical study. The application of cognitive science allowed us a number of
crucial insights. First of all the studies of cognitive psychologists demonstrating the existence of
a cognitive model of the ideal life, allowed us to understand what motivates the use of
divination. The way that the cognitive system represents action provided the key to
understanding why ritualized action seems so crucial for impetrative divination. In oblative
divination we saw how the effect of priming a subject with a story of the possibility of a
counterintuitive agent communicating through a sign, was important for perceiving an event as
an omen. In general the credibility of an interpretation of divination seemed to depend on a
cognitive bias towards conceptualizing prestigious agents as more credible than less prestigious.
It has also been fruitful from the point of view of cognitive science. We saw how the framing of
the question of representation of divination stimulated new questions to be researched in
cognitive psychological experiments. On the other hand, the application has allowed us to see
that not all things found in psychological experiments turn out to be important in real life since
the categories employed in divination turned out to be insignificant. These are all insights and
experiences that have been made possible by the experiment that this dissertation is.
The theoretical model offered here may also explain dissemination and survival of divination
in other societies as well, since it is intended as a general model. Nevertheless, only further
research will be able to say whether it is accurate or not. The model may also be adapted to
analyze knowledge producing practices in general, such as science, gossip, news, commercials
etc. This could be done by taking out the ritualization parameter and possibly adding other
factors. This would allow us to analyze how certain information is assigned differential
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