DAN SPERBER is a French social and cognitive scientist. He has developed an "epidemiological approach to culture: 'Cultural Attraction Theory.'" With Deirdre Wilson, he has developed a cognitive approach to communication known as "Relevance Theory." Both cultural attraction theory and relevance theory have been influential and also controversial.
He holds an emeritus research professorship at the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Paris, and a part-time professorship in the Department of Cognitive Science of the Central European University in Budapest.
He is the author numerous articles on anthropology, linguistics, philosophy, and psychology, and three books: Rethinking Symbolism, On Anthropological Knowledge, and Explaining Culture. In these three books, he has developed a naturalistic approach to culture under the name of "epidemiology of representations." He is also the co-author, with Deirdre Wilson, of Relevance: Communication and Cognition and Meaning and Relevance, and, with Hugo Mercier, of The Enigma of Reason.
