Magic vs. Science in Anthropology

• The division between magic and science/reason is central to anthropological thought and Western modernity's self-understanding.
• This division involves conceptual dichotomies between civilized and primitive societies.
• Anthropological thought questions this division, challenging Western modernity's self-understanding.

Important Aspects

• The difference between magic and reason symbolizes Western moderns rejecting 'superstition' in favor of 'objective' Reason.
• This rejection influences Western understanding of itself and its relations to other cultures.
• Magic is considered as rational as science by Evans-Pritchard and Boas.
• Such a view changes a) anthropological investigation and b) Western modernity if the distinction between primitive and modern is removed.

Practical Application

• Stage magicians can be understood if the magic/reason distinction is valid.
• Examining technique and deception in stage magic challenges denying rationality to magic in non-Western contexts.
• It also questions attributing rationality to Western scientific practice.
• Anthropologists have been described as "merchants of strange" by Geertz.
• Specific anthropological studies question why anthropology is compelled to discover the non-'civilized' Other.
• This tells more about anthropology and Western modernity.
• The erosion of the magic/reason distinction invites the consideration of Western society in anthropological terms.
• This involves operations of modern capitalism not based on calculative reason but on magical premises and practices.

Key Works

• Brian Moeran: “Magical Capitalism”
• Bruce Kapferer: “How anthropologists think: configurations of the exotic”
• Graham Jones: "Magic's Reason"
• Bruno Latour: “We Have Never Been Modern”
• Franz Boas: "Religion of the Kwakiutal Indians"
• Daniel Berrett: "Anthropology Without Science"
• Brian Moore: “The Magician’s Wife”

The Magic and Reason Debate

• Magic's role has historically been to distinguish between the modern and pre-modern worlds.
• Magic acts as a conceptual dichotomy.
• A concept is an idea or notion
• A dichotomy divides something into two distinct, mutually exclusive groups.
• Concepts help order and structure the world.
• A conceptual dichotomy is a mental framework dividing the world into often opposing pairs.
• Examples of conceptual dichotomies include: Man/Woman, Nature/Nurture, Reason/Emotion, Theory/Practice, and Body/Soul.
• These pairs are related but exist in opposition.
• Magic operates as part of a conceptual dichotomy with science, civilization and reason.
• Anthropology studies human society and culture.
• It originated in the late 19th century in countries, including the United States, Great Britain, France, and Austria.
• Inspired by Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, anthropology studied human evolution as a biological group.
• Anthropologists began studying how culture shapes experiences and social relations within and between groups.
• From the early 20th century, anthropologists focused on magic.
• Foundational works like Marcel Mauss and Henri Hubert’s Outline of a General Theory of Magic explored occult magic.
• These texts also looked at magic's relation to ritual and religion, focusing on shamans, sorcerers, witches, astrologers.
• Anthropological magic theory considers ‘magic’ as controlling natural and supernatural forces via rituals, behaviors, and actions.
• In this sense, 'magic' usually refers to prehistoric or premodern cultures, rather than its contemporary Western meaning.
• Contemporary Western culture considers magic as stage magic, involving magicians, conjurors, and prestidigitators as entertainment.
• Early anthropologists differentiate between Harry Houdini-type magicians and Azande witch doctors:
• Audiences watching stage magic know they are being deceived and do not believe displays are supernatural.
• Admiration comes from appreciating the skilled craft and ingenious planning.
• Modern stage magic celebrates rational technique.
• With modern Western magic, pleasure is derived from knowing the deception.
• In the anthropological sense, those experiencing magic do not realize they are being deceived.
• Magic is synonymous with deception in early anthropological understandings.
• James Frazer and Edward Tylor saw magic as the antithesis of science:
• Tylor: magic was a "great delusion” made by primitive people.
• Frazer: magic was a backwards but necessary cultural evolution stage, progressing from magic to religion, then to science.
• Early European anthropologists acknowledged magic practices in their own history but believed this phase preceded rationality and civilization.
• Magic in European cultural history came before its "modern age", thus symbolizing a primitive stage.
• Contemporary cultures practicing magic were considered primitive or pre-modern.
• Frazer and Tyler used the worldview of social evolutionism.
• Social evolutionism, a 19th-century theory, proposed a single evolutionary path for all human societies.
• Each culture or society evolves over time through definite stages: savagery to civilization.
• Social evolutionism claimed a universal evolutionary path with definite stages.
• In the 19th century significant variations existed between societies, especially in scientific and technological development.
• Social evolutionist theory's second premise explained this variety:
• While all societies followed a social evolution path, they progressed at different speeds.
• A diverse range of societies exists because they have evolved at different rates.
• Regardless of speed, each society follows the same linear social evolution path.
• Social evolution's stages involved a three-stage model across most anthropologists.
• Lewis Henry Morgan and Tyler used a tripartite schema going from savagery (hunting) to barbarism (herding) and then civilization, possibly based on Montesquieu.
• Morgan subdivided savagery and barbarism into stages: low, middle, and high.
• As societies evolved from savagery to civilization, they became more complex.
• Complexity in social relationships (political arrangements, kinship structures, religious organizations) contributed to a society's evolutionary ladder position.
• Technological sophistication was more typically the deciding factor.
• Equating technological advancement with societal progress remains prevalent.
• Terms like Stone Age or Bronze Age use technology as a short hand for the entire social system.
• Progress towards civilization equated a lot of technological development.
• Lack of technological development equated a distance from civilization.
• The period of anthropology's development coincided with the age of empire.
• European powers had trade, exploration, and conquest, opening large parts of the world.
• These empires made direct contact with other societies.
• Anthropology partially explained this global social diversity scientifically.
• Some theorists, like Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821), saw social forms diversity as evidence of cultural degeneration.
• All humans had been at the same cultural level, but some had since degenerated, except usually Europeans.
• Morgan, Tylor, and other social evolutionists argued for human progressive view against theories like de Maistre's.
• All human societies followed the same cultural evolution path.
• Non-European societies differed from European societies, not from degeneracy, but from being at different evolutionary stages.
• Those societies were not driven out of paradise and fallen like the myth of Eden.
• The non-European societies were on the same path as the Europeans.
• Non-European societies' apparent 'Otherness' was only a perception.
• These societies that struck Europeans as different were at earlier development stages of European society.
• A North American First Nation tribe was comparable to early-European society, for example.
• 'Primitive' societies were actually at an earlier social evolution stage.

The key points of the social evolutionist

• All human societies evolve along
• A unilinear social development path, passing through the same stages given universal progression.
• All stages that European society passed en route to civilization will be repeated by non-European societies.
• "Progress", understood as European society civilization, is available globally to all societies.
• Technological development shows increasing societal Reason, yielding civilization.
• Societal evolution laws apply universally.
• All humans can and will be 'civilized' as a result.
• Early anthropology obsessed over magic in non-European societies due to enlightenment principles motivating social evolutionists.
• Social evolution largely shows the intellectual evolution:
• Societies rationally scrutinize themselves and the world around them.
• Progressing rational analysis and technique enhances human liberty to increase scientific and technological control.
• Superstition and repressive tradition are also destroyed.
• 'Primitive' magic viewed contrary to civilization because smacks of superstition.
• To many Europeans it was inextricably bound to beliefs in the supernatural and religious beliefs from cultures that were not Christian.
• It appeared an irrational belief system.
• Many anthropologists of the time considered magic irrational and deceptive.
• Primitive was seen as designing to sway and trick gullible people who believed in them.
• From Enlightenment-era social evolutionists' perspectives magic was deemed irrational.
• The scientific worldview of the time viewed the universe as matter particles obeying universal physical laws.
• Matter behaved the same way under the same physical conditions, holding true over time.
• Water boils at 100 degrees Celsius today, in the past, and even in future.
• Matter operates mechanically in a predictable fashion like with billiard balls.
• There is no mystery about things like cause, effect, motion, matter.
• Given a rational explanation of natural phenomena, primitive magic was offensive.
• Belief in supernatural forces disobeyed physics laws and had no universal consistency but were performed by certain people.
• That is why 'primitive' magic was viewed as irrational because it was neither universal nor consistent, nor subject to empirical testing and verification.
• Presence of active magical tradition placed society at opposite of evolutionary from civilization, a viewed considered an impediment of reason.
• Considering civilization's antithesis, social evolutionist anthropologists required magic's opposition was not simply rejected.
• Social evolutionist anthropology had to account for all social forms and behaviors scientifically.
• Anthropologists had to explain reasons primitive societies have magical traditions.
• Under the tripartite unilinear scheme of social evolution 'Primitive' societies were therefore just precursors of civilizations.
• Magic systems of primitive societies must be earlier forms of rational knowledge systems of modern European civilization.
• Magic as knowledge and natural world control: Magical beliefs and practices seen as early forms of scientific knowledge and praxis created dilemma.
• The irrational opposite of the highest form of knowledge was rational Western science.
• Universal laws of social evolution made explaining magic as an early form of scientific rationality a necessity.
• Explaining beings rational should cling to irrational beliefs like magic became challenge.
• Explaining magic as being a precursor form to sciences was also required.
• The person to proffer the solution was Sir Edward Burnett Tylor in his Tylor.
• Tylor was adamant of primitive magic being irrational.
• Tylor described it in his books like Primitive Culture and stated they belong to the "lowest known stages of civilization as well as the lower races".
• Tylor viewed analysis of magic to burnish the credentials of freshly founded anthropology.
• By meeting the challenge given with the previous conditions, anthropology would be able to demonstrate its scientific worth.
• Analogies connected primitive magic with science, and anthropology with science's shared commitment.
• In general, analogy shows similarities between what is different.
• The basis for human rationality: Analogies are the basis of scientific and magical reasoning.
• Origins of science comes from identifying commonalities of grouping like things, and patterns of cause.
• Magic is based upon analogies which are the root basis from sciences.
• Science has similar foundations and reasoning in their approaches.
• Tylor explains primitive magic’s relationship to advanced science: One is an earlier iteration.
• By claiming both are based in rational cognitive analogical reasoning, Tylor justifies how magical beliefs are dissimilar but are a source
• The irrational opposite of magic that justifies his modern science position is the contrary of today.
• Human reason and analogy are both interconnected in "the very foundation of human reason, but of unreason also".
• Primitive is viewed as primitive in that is based off what is already created rather than the real world.
• Both have their own differences though.
• Analogy connection creates new phenomenon through the method of analogy.
• Magic beliefs of connection create relationships between animal activity and future fortune.
• Magic beliefs of analogy are believed in those ways which are not based in reality.
• Magic, for example, is heuristic: Scientists identify resemblances so that they can refine and test them with analogy.
• Analogies helps further connections through repeated tests.
• Connections such produced give truthful relationships.
• Magical connections however remain imaginary with non objective external connections that should remain analogous instead.
• The Zulu will chew wood and the soft action is supposed to translate to the hardness relationship between the seller.
• Wood is translated as the likeness of the heart which must be softened.
• No causal relation (soft with soft or hard with hard in reality).
• As such, it is not testable.
• So, for Tylor, primitive magic represents reason with no empirical grounding or verification.
• Primitive Magic represents a process operating without a grounding, and is replaced with ungrounded fantasy with reality.
• Cognitive process of analogy is not irrational but those aspects which are lacking in knowledge are.
• Analogy paired with empirical knowledge creates good reason.
• Analogy by Tylor is used to show magic is system of belief and the earlier developments of science at its beginning.
• Is irrational and deceptive, and is rather the ones who practice it.
• Belief of that type is viewed towards those of the shaman or sorcerer, for example or the diviner.
• If you live in harmony then to believe in magic it is understandable.
• Believing in them also relates to their success and demonstration of power as it is also known.
• In such societies forms of low level practice and shared beliefs exists as well.
• Early scholars were more concerned with the specialists and their views when they were needed.
• They reinforced the magic in the societies that reinforced their own personal powers and beliefs in magical systems.
• Anthropologists knew well that those things were irrational due to them being Western educated.
• In the modern form, rituals showed magic that further reinforced power because they had none of it at their belief.
• Then this leads to a lack of authenticity with having to perform something.
• The view of performance is created when the Shaman's actions are explained by the anthropologists.
• Shamans were seen as doing sleight of hand magic when performing.
• These actions meant no belief or knowledge of having a real ability.
• Created appearance to perform.
• Impossible to believe without creating any form of deception, and that they do in fact not know it.
• The knowledge comes down to rituals so the purpose can deceive viewers.
• Early anthropologists are very interested, and this creates two categories of:
• That the unlearned system creates delusion to persuade reality.
• Are the chief practitioners that perform rituals as a collection of con artists that know the load of nonsense.
• The olden days of anthropology were very interventionist that involved actively trying the magic-users to get involved.
• Contemporary view by Graham J suggests to the history of modern studies, such as the history of stage magic.

Modern Magic and Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin

• The traditions of magic have existed the time of the West, but also found the various types such as healers and witches.

• A new western society by the name of magic came about with something more unique, which was the practice of anti-magic.

• The first of the stages had the intention on those enlightenment projects that early anthropologists shared.

• Shared beliefs and technological advancement, was for the society's rationality technological power and ability showed an achieving level.

• They also shared beliefs the same the anthropologists which were also keen and were distant themselves with fortune tellers.

• In efforts was magic of was and was those as a more was rational that skeptics'

• Weber argued that Western modernity marked an ongoing process

• Disenchantment had effectively demystified the world by de-magicked.

• Magic of European was was in this sense and had a change, a move that was intended by Graham Jones to move magic forward more rationally.

• Instead, magic would would and reason.