I discuss motivations for methodological naturalism in science. I argue that methodological naturalism neither needs nor supports metaphysical naturalism. We are the beneficiaries of many generations’ efforts to unlock the mysteries of nature. The best scientific theories of today have achieved unparalleled predictive success, and this success provides some evidence that these theories have lat...

Natural products play a significant role in drug discovery and development. Many topological pharmacophore patterns are common between natural products and commercial drugs. A better understanding of the specific physicochemical and structural features of natural products is important for corresponding drug development. Several encyclopedias of natural compounds have been composed, but the info...

The current research tested the hypothesis that the abilities for understanding other people's minds give rise to the cognitive biases that underlie supernatural beliefs. We used structural equation modeling (N=2789) to determine the roles of various mentalizing tendencies, namely self-reported affective and cognitive empathy (i.e., mind reading), actual cognitive and affective empathic abiliti...

OBJECTIVE Decision making for health care at the household level is a crucial factor for malaria management and control among young children. This study sought to determine exactly how mothers reacted when faced with fever in a child. DESIGN Qualitative study based on in depth semistructured interviews of mothers and free form discussion with traditional healers (Nganga). SETTING Village of...

In this chapter we examine variation in the contents of supernatural minds across cultures and the social correlates of this variation. We first provide a sketch of how humans are capable of representing supernatural minds and emphasize the significance of the types of knowledge attributed to supernatural agents. We then argue that the contents of supernatural minds as represented cross-cultura...

The ability to mentalize has been marked as an important cognitive mechanism enabling belief in supernatural agents. In five studies we cross-culturally investigated the relationship between mentalizing and belief in supernatural agents with large sample sizes (over 67,000 participants in total) and different operationalizations of mentalizing. The relative importance of mentalizing for endorsi...

BACKGROUND Mental disorders such as depression are common and rank as major contributors to the global burden of disease. Condition recognition and subsequent management of depression is variable and influenced by the attitudes and beliefs of clinicians as well as those of patients. Most studies examining health professionals' attitudes have been conducted in Western nations; this study explore...

Since ancient times, a natural number has been called perfect if it equals the sum of its proper divisors; e.g., 6 = 1+2+3 is a perfect number. In 1913, Dickson showed that for each fixed k, there are only finitely many odd perfect numbers with at most k distinct prime factors. We show how this result, and many like it, follow from embedding the natural numbers in the supernatural numbers and i...

In early modern Venice, establishing the cause of a disease was critical to determining the appropriate cure: natural remedies for natural illnesses, spiritual solutions for supernatural or demonic ones. One common ailment was the French disease (syphilis), widely distributed throughout Venice's neighborhoods and social hierarchy, and evenly distributed between men and women. The disease was wi...