Magic, Science and Religion and the Scope of Rationality: 1984 (Lewis Henry Morgan Lectures) - Hardcover

Tambiah, Stanley J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521374863 ISBN 13: 9780521374866

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 1990

Synopsis

Professor Tambiah, one of today's leading anthropologists, is known particularly for his penetrating and scholarly studies of Buddhism. In this accessible and illuminating book he deals with the classical opposition between magic, 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 Levy Bruhl's philosophical anthropology, which posited a distinction between mystical and logical mentalities. There follows a wide-ranging and suggestive discussion of rationality and relativism. The book concludes with a discussion of thinking in the history and philosophy of science, which suggests interesting perspectives on the classical opposition between science and magic.

About this title

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:

In the Western tradition, the boundaries between magic, science and religion have been continually contested. In this straightforward text, Professor Tambiah shows that modern anthropological theorists drew upon the classical sources but introduced new, ethnographic case materials.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0521374863
• ISBN 13: 9780521374866
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 200