Author: Vibeke Steffen
Publisher: Museum Tusculanum Press
ISBN: 8763542137
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 382
Book Description
In Between Magic and Reality, Vibeke Steffen, Steffen Jöhncke, and Kirsten Marie Raahauge bring together a diverse range of ethnographies that examine and explore the forms of reflection, action, and interaction that govern the ways different contemporary societies create and challenge the limits of reason. The essays here visit an impressive array of settings, including international scientific laboratories, British spiritualist meetings, Chinese villages, Danish rehabilitation centers, and Uzbeki homes, where they encounter a diverse assortment of people whose beliefs and concerns exhibit an unusual but central contemporary dichotomy: scientific reason versus spiritual/paranormal belief. Exploring the paradoxical way these modes of thought push against reason's boundaries, they offer a deep look at the complex ways they coexist, contest one another, and are ultimately intertwined. Vibeke Steffen is associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Copenhagen, where Steffen Jöncke is senior advisor. Kirsten Marie Raahauge is associate professor in the School of Design at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen.
Between Magic and Rationality
Author: Vibeke Steffen
Publisher: Museum Tusculanum Press
ISBN: 8763542137
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 382
Book Description
In Between Magic and Reality, Vibeke Steffen, Steffen Jöhncke, and Kirsten Marie Raahauge bring together a diverse range of ethnographies that examine and explore the forms of reflection, action, and interaction that govern the ways different contemporary societies create and challenge the limits of reason. The essays here visit an impressive array of settings, including international scientific laboratories, British spiritualist meetings, Chinese villages, Danish rehabilitation centers, and Uzbeki homes, where they encounter a diverse assortment of people whose beliefs and concerns exhibit an unusual but central contemporary dichotomy: scientific reason versus spiritual/paranormal belief. Exploring the paradoxical way these modes of thought push against reason's boundaries, they offer a deep look at the complex ways they coexist, contest one another, and are ultimately intertwined. Vibeke Steffen is associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Copenhagen, where Steffen Jöncke is senior advisor. Kirsten Marie Raahauge is associate professor in the School of Design at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen.
Publisher: Museum Tusculanum Press
ISBN: 8763542137
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 382
Book Description
In Between Magic and Reality, Vibeke Steffen, Steffen Jöhncke, and Kirsten Marie Raahauge bring together a diverse range of ethnographies that examine and explore the forms of reflection, action, and interaction that govern the ways different contemporary societies create and challenge the limits of reason. The essays here visit an impressive array of settings, including international scientific laboratories, British spiritualist meetings, Chinese villages, Danish rehabilitation centers, and Uzbeki homes, where they encounter a diverse assortment of people whose beliefs and concerns exhibit an unusual but central contemporary dichotomy: scientific reason versus spiritual/paranormal belief. Exploring the paradoxical way these modes of thought push against reason's boundaries, they offer a deep look at the complex ways they coexist, contest one another, and are ultimately intertwined. Vibeke Steffen is associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Copenhagen, where Steffen Jöncke is senior advisor. Kirsten Marie Raahauge is associate professor in the School of Design at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen.
Magic, Science and Religion and the Scope of Rationality
Author: Stanley J. Tambiah
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521376310
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 204
Book Description
This accessible and illuminating book explores the classical opposition between magic, science and religion.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521376310
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 204
Book Description
This accessible and illuminating book explores the classical opposition between magic, science and religion.
Magic's Reason
Author: Graham M. Jones
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022651871X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 219
Book Description
In Magic’s Reason, Graham M. Jones tells the entwined stories of anthropology and entertainment magic. The two pursuits are not as separate as they may seem at first. As Jones shows, they not only matured around the same time, but they also shared mutually reinforcing stances toward modernity and rationality. It is no historical accident, for example, that colonial ethnographers drew analogies between Western magicians and native ritual performers, who, in their view, hoodwinked gullible people into believing their sleight of hand was divine. Using French magicians’ engagements with North African ritual performers as a case study, Jones shows how magic became enshrined in anthropological reasoning. Acknowledging the residue of magic’s colonial origins doesn’t require us to dispense with it. Rather, through this radical reassessment of classic anthropological ideas, Magic’s Reason develops a new perspective on the promise and peril of cross-cultural comparison.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022651871X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 219
Book Description
In Magic’s Reason, Graham M. Jones tells the entwined stories of anthropology and entertainment magic. The two pursuits are not as separate as they may seem at first. As Jones shows, they not only matured around the same time, but they also shared mutually reinforcing stances toward modernity and rationality. It is no historical accident, for example, that colonial ethnographers drew analogies between Western magicians and native ritual performers, who, in their view, hoodwinked gullible people into believing their sleight of hand was divine. Using French magicians’ engagements with North African ritual performers as a case study, Jones shows how magic became enshrined in anthropological reasoning. Acknowledging the residue of magic’s colonial origins doesn’t require us to dispense with it. Rather, through this radical reassessment of classic anthropological ideas, Magic’s Reason develops a new perspective on the promise and peril of cross-cultural comparison.
Magic And Rationality In Ancient Near Eastern And Graeco-roman Medicine
Author: Herman F. J. Horstmanshoff
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004136665
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 424
Book Description
A study of methods in Ancient Near Eastern and Greek and Roman medicine, based on representative text corpora. Central is the question of what is "rational," or not, in the various systems.
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004136665
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 424
Book Description
A study of methods in Ancient Near Eastern and Greek and Roman medicine, based on representative text corpora. Central is the question of what is "rational," or not, in the various systems.
Magic
Author: Ernesto De Martino
Publisher: Hau
ISBN: 9780990505099
Category : Basilicata (Italy)
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Though his work was little known outside Italian intellectual circles for most of the twentieth century, anthropologist and historian of religions Ernesto de Martino is now recognized as one of the most original thinkers in the field. This book is testament to de Martino's innovation and engagement with Hegelian historicism and phenomenology--a work of ethnographic theory way ahead of its time. This new translation of Sud e Magia, his 1959 study of ceremonial magic and witchcraft in southern Italy, shows how De Martino is not interested in the question of whether magic is rational or irrational but rather in why it came to be perceived as a problem of knowledge in the first place. Setting his exploration within his wider, pathbreaking theorization of ritual, as well as in the context of his politically sensitive analysis of the global south's historical encounters with Western science, he presents the development of magic and ritual in Enlightenment Naples as a paradigmatic example of the complex dynamics between dominant and subaltern cultures. Far ahead of its time, Magic is still relevant as anthropologists continue to wrestle with modernity's relationship with magical thinking.
Publisher: Hau
ISBN: 9780990505099
Category : Basilicata (Italy)
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Though his work was little known outside Italian intellectual circles for most of the twentieth century, anthropologist and historian of religions Ernesto de Martino is now recognized as one of the most original thinkers in the field. This book is testament to de Martino's innovation and engagement with Hegelian historicism and phenomenology--a work of ethnographic theory way ahead of its time. This new translation of Sud e Magia, his 1959 study of ceremonial magic and witchcraft in southern Italy, shows how De Martino is not interested in the question of whether magic is rational or irrational but rather in why it came to be perceived as a problem of knowledge in the first place. Setting his exploration within his wider, pathbreaking theorization of ritual, as well as in the context of his politically sensitive analysis of the global south's historical encounters with Western science, he presents the development of magic and ritual in Enlightenment Naples as a paradigmatic example of the complex dynamics between dominant and subaltern cultures. Far ahead of its time, Magic is still relevant as anthropologists continue to wrestle with modernity's relationship with magical thinking.
Religion as Magical Ideology
Author: Konrad Talmont-Kaminski
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317544730
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 177
Book Description
'Religion as Magical Ideology' examines the relationship between rationality and supernatural beliefs arguing that such beliefs are products of evolution, cognition and culture. The book does not offer a false rapprochement between reason and religion; instead, it explores their interrelationship as a series of complex adaptations between cognitive and cultural processes. Exploring the nature of the tension between religious traditions and reason, 'Religion as Magical Ideology' develops a dual inheritance theory of religion - which combines the cognitive byproduct and prosocial adaptation accounts - and analyses the connection between the function of a belief and the degree of protection it gets from potential counter-evidence. With discussion ranging from individual cognitive mechanisms, general functional considerations, to the limits of evolutionary and cognitive processes, the book offers readers a systematic account of how cognition shapes religious beliefs and practices.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317544730
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 177
Book Description
'Religion as Magical Ideology' examines the relationship between rationality and supernatural beliefs arguing that such beliefs are products of evolution, cognition and culture. The book does not offer a false rapprochement between reason and religion; instead, it explores their interrelationship as a series of complex adaptations between cognitive and cultural processes. Exploring the nature of the tension between religious traditions and reason, 'Religion as Magical Ideology' develops a dual inheritance theory of religion - which combines the cognitive byproduct and prosocial adaptation accounts - and analyses the connection between the function of a belief and the degree of protection it gets from potential counter-evidence. With discussion ranging from individual cognitive mechanisms, general functional considerations, to the limits of evolutionary and cognitive processes, the book offers readers a systematic account of how cognition shapes religious beliefs and practices.
Magic and Rationality in Ancient Near Eastern and Graeco-Roman Medicine
Author: Manfred Horstmanshoff
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9047414314
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 423
Book Description
For the first time, medical systems of the Ancient Near East and the Greek and Roman world are studied side by side and compared. Early medicine in Babylonia, Egypt, the Minoan and Mycenean world; later medicine in Hippocrates, Galen, Aelius Aristides, Vindicianus, the Talmud. The focus is the degree of "rationality" or "irrationality" in the various ways of medical thought and treatment. Fifteen specialists contributed thoughtful and well-documented chapters on important issues.
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9047414314
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 423
Book Description
For the first time, medical systems of the Ancient Near East and the Greek and Roman world are studied side by side and compared. Early medicine in Babylonia, Egypt, the Minoan and Mycenean world; later medicine in Hippocrates, Galen, Aelius Aristides, Vindicianus, the Talmud. The focus is the degree of "rationality" or "irrationality" in the various ways of medical thought and treatment. Fifteen specialists contributed thoughtful and well-documented chapters on important issues.
Believing in Magic
Author: Stuart A. Vyse
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780195136340
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 276
Book Description
On superstition
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780195136340
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 276
Book Description
On superstition
The Politics of Pessimism in Ecclesiastes
Author: Mark R. Sneed
Publisher: Society of Biblical Lit
ISBN: 1589836359
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 358
Book Description
Scholars attempt to resolve the problem of the book of Ecclesiastes’ heterodox character in one of two ways, either explaining away the book’s disturbing qualities or radicalizing and championing it as a precursor of modern existentialism. This volume offers an interpretation of Ecclesiastes that both acknowledges the unorthodox nature of Qoheleth’s words and accounts for its acceptance among the canonical books of the Hebrew Bible. It argues that, instead of being the most secular and modern of biblical books, Ecclesiastes is perhaps one of the most religious and primitive. Bringing a Weberian approach to Ecclesiastes, it represents a paradigm of the application of a social-science methodology.
Publisher: Society of Biblical Lit
ISBN: 1589836359
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 358
Book Description
Scholars attempt to resolve the problem of the book of Ecclesiastes’ heterodox character in one of two ways, either explaining away the book’s disturbing qualities or radicalizing and championing it as a precursor of modern existentialism. This volume offers an interpretation of Ecclesiastes that both acknowledges the unorthodox nature of Qoheleth’s words and accounts for its acceptance among the canonical books of the Hebrew Bible. It argues that, instead of being the most secular and modern of biblical books, Ecclesiastes is perhaps one of the most religious and primitive. Bringing a Weberian approach to Ecclesiastes, it represents a paradigm of the application of a social-science methodology.
Rules, Magic and Instrumental Reason
Author: Berel Dov Lerner
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136404929
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 196
Book Description
This book offers a systematic and critical discussion of Peter Winch's writings on the philosophy of the social sciences. The author points to Winch's tendency to over-emphasize the importance of language and communication, and his insufficient attention to the role of practical, technological activites in human life and society. It also offers an appendix devoted to the controversy between the anthropologists Marshall Sahlins and Gananath Obeyesekere regarding Captain James Cook's Hawaiian adventures. Essential reading for those studying the development of philosophy in the twentieth century, this book will also be of great interest to anthropologists, sociologists, scholars of religion, and all those with an interest in the relationship between philosophy and the social sciences.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136404929
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 196
Book Description
This book offers a systematic and critical discussion of Peter Winch's writings on the philosophy of the social sciences. The author points to Winch's tendency to over-emphasize the importance of language and communication, and his insufficient attention to the role of practical, technological activites in human life and society. It also offers an appendix devoted to the controversy between the anthropologists Marshall Sahlins and Gananath Obeyesekere regarding Captain James Cook's Hawaiian adventures. Essential reading for those studying the development of philosophy in the twentieth century, this book will also be of great interest to anthropologists, sociologists, scholars of religion, and all those with an interest in the relationship between philosophy and the social sciences.