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Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah
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Magic, Science and Religion and the Scope of Rationality (Lewis Henry Morgan Lectures) 1st Paperback Edition

by Stanley J. Tambiah (Author)
4.8 4.8 out of 5 stars 13 ratings
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Professor Tambiah is one of the leading anthropologists of the day, particularly known for his penetrating and scholarly studies of Buddhism. In this accessible and illuminating book he deals with the classical opposition of magic with science and religion. He reviews the great debates in classical Judaism, early Greek science, Renaissance philosophy, the Protestant Reformation, and the scientific revolution, and then reconsiders the three major interpretive approaches to magic in anthropology: the intellectualist and evolutionary theories of Tylor and Frazer, Malinowski's functionalism, and Lévy-Bruhl's philosophical anthropology, which posited a distinction between mystical and logical mentalities. He follows with a wide-ranging and suggestive discussion of rationality and relativism and concludes with a discussion of new thinking in the history and philosophy of science, suggesting fresh perspectives on the classical opposition between science and magic.
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  1. ISBN-10
    9780521376310
  2. ISBN-13
    978-0521376310
  3. Edition
    1st Paperback Edition
  4. Publisher
    Cambridge University Press
  5. Publication date
    March 30, 1990
  6. Language
    English
  7. Dimensions
    6 x 0.46 x 9 inches
  8. Print length
    200 pages
  9. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"...this book will be of immense benefit to all those involved in the study of the mental and cultural life of humankind." Journal of the American Academy of Religion

"This enormously erudite but engaging study offers a tough, critical, and morally sensitive perspective on the history of central issues in anthropological theory. More than either a theoretical manifesto or a philosophical disquisition, it makes the anthropological project and the history of ideas mutually relevant to a degree rarely achieved before now." Choice

Book Description

This accessible and illuminating book explores the classical opposition between magic, science and religion.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0521376319
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Cambridge University Press; 1st Paperback Edition (March 30, 1990)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 200 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780521376310
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0521376310
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 11.6 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.46 x 9 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.8 4.8 out of 5 stars 13 ratings

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Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah

Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah

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Customer reviews

4.8 out of 5 stars
4.8 out of 5
13 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Bob Fields
5.0 out of 5 stars Very interesting academic book
Reviewed in the United States on November 27, 2022
Verified Purchase
This book is a book form of a lecture series given by the author in 1984. Doctor Tambiah was an eminent professor of Anthropology at Harvard. The book is largely a review and critical interpretation of the relevant literature and as such it is a good introduction to some of the ideas of Sir James Frazer, William James, Lucien Levi-Bruhl, Lucien Malinowski and other philosophers and anthropologists. Among other topics, he explores "orderings of reality" among disparate groups - indigenous/Western, Ancient/modern, male/female, artist/scientist. A worthwhile read.
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Scott MacLeod
5.0 out of 5 stars Tambiah's internal framework of science schemata
Reviewed in the United States on April 15, 2004
Concerning Tambiah's inquiry into science in this book:
In "Magic, Science, Religion, and the Scope of Rationality," Harvard anthropologist Stanley Tambiah examines the logic and sociology of scientific inquiry. Tambiah identifies (see figure on page 141) the internal framework of scientific inquiry as a collection of relations between, on the one hand, bodies of specialized knowledge (rectangles) and, -- on the other, subdisciplines, specializations with conventions and "rules of the game" (ovals) accepted by peer groups and professional associations.
Tambiah suggests
"that the Western conception of science as a labeled, self-conscious and reflexive activity of experimentation, measurement and verification matured in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Europe, that at this time there was a decisive separating off of Christianity (Protestantism) from science, and the repudiation of a third realm of activity as magic. . . . A very critical precondition of modern science was the contribution of early Greece. According to the classicists it was in early Greece that the systematization of the rules of demonstration and proof was begun, and the marking off of nature as the domain of regular laws of causality was achieved (p. 140)."
While Tambiah's historical explanation situates science in relation to magic and religion, the chart on page 141 is schematically useful to orient the internal framework of science in relation to external frameworks (of special contemporary interest), namely to 1) technological applications and interventions in society, 2) the social construction of knowledge / cosmological and ideological belief systems, 3) soico-political and economic interests in society, and 4) the impact of "external history." To gain useful purchase on the sociology of science, see this chart / figure.
17 people found this helpful
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Jose A.
4.0 out of 5 stars Four Stars
Reviewed in the United States on May 25, 2015
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docread
5.0 out of 5 stars An intellectual gem
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 1, 2014
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A dense engaging survey of the key issues in contemporary anthropology and philosophy offering well argued theses about rationality, relativism,and the translation and commensurability of cultures. The author a Harvard anthropologist, seems at ease in the company of the modern science philosophers like Kuhn,Putnam and Davidson as well moral philosophers like MacIntyre,Williams and Hampshire.He starts with an illuminating introduction discussing the origin of Greek scientific mentality and plotting the history of the demarcation between magic, science and religion in Western thought in the 16th and 17th century.

This is followed by an in depth discussion of the evolutionary theories of Tylor and Frazer supplemented by an unexpected Wittgenstein's critique of Frazer's approach to the problem of magic in primitive societies pointing out how "we civilised in our linguistic and cultural constructions are like those savages".The author proceeds to introduce Malinowski 's functionalism and Levy-Bruhl distinction between mystical and logical mentalities .He concludes that even in our modern life we experience multiple orderings of reality which are complementary and are derived from two orientations to the world that are simultaneously available.He distinguishes between 'participation' as a cognitive and affective mode on the one hand framed in terms of sympathetic immediacy and totalization of phenomena and 'causality' on the other ,that represents the categories and rules of positive science and discursive mathematical logical reason with the atomisation of phenomena.

The second Part of the book grapples with four interrelated themes, namely the delineation of rationality as a process of constructing knowledge and following consistent actions with one's objectives. The question of relativism as it relates to the psychic unity or diversity of cultures and societies.The question of translation between cultures and what it involves in terms of shared standards of inference or truth, while underlining the risk of making category mistakes through the misapplication of rational canons to affective or aesthetic phenomena.Lastly he discusses the question of comparability and commensurability terms derived from modern analytical philosophy. It would be an impossible exercise to briefly sum up the remarkable insights he brings into his discussion of the limits of human rationality, the understanding of cultural diversities and our modern concepts of science-making and how it fits into the socio economic realm.

This landmark work analyses critically the most relevant ideas of the Western theorists , the philosophers and social scientists of the last century in their attempts to answer how the mind constructs reality in different cultures and how different societies attempt to provide ultimate cognitive and emotional meanings to the needs and concerns of the human social self. A magnificent work to ponder and read again to appreciate the sweeping range and profundity of its ideas.
6 people found this helpful
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