Magic

Of particular interest to intellectual history is the way that the terms magic and religion have been used in a social evolutionary framework to mark differences between the Western and non-Western, the advanced and backward, civilized and primitive cultures, and to characterize Christian and non-Christian religions. Many scholarly ideas are based on a set of assumptions about the differences between magic and religion, placing greater importance on the achievements of religion and greater value on its truth claims. These ideas bear some similarity to distinctions offered in the Old Testament and in early Christian theology. Some scholarly ideas address the difference between magic and science, where the latter is viewed in more positive terms. In the nineteenth and part of the twentieth century anthropological discussions of magic, religion, and science were heavily influenced by evolutionary theories and debates about the nature of scientific reasoning and practice. They also tended to rely on the understanding that magic involved the manipulation of mystical forces and beings, was used to achieve practical goals, and was intended to affect the natural world.

E. B. Tylor (1832–1917) and James G. Frazer (1854–1941) made some of the most important early contributions to the study of magic and religion, although both relied on ethnographic information that was limited in geographic scope and lacked extensive contextualization.

In contrast to a number of previous ideas holding that magic is an undeveloped and primitive form of thought, Tylor found that magic required a rational process of analogy based on understanding the links between cause and effect. He was also interested in its symbolic properties. He did, however, emphasize the differences between thought in magic and thought in science, for he called magic a "pseudoscience" that was incorrect and deluded. His point was that people involved in magic could not differentiate between causal relationships achieved through magic, and causal relationships that occur in nature. Although he thought that both magic and religion could exist together in any given society, he proposed that magic diminished as human institutions advanced and therefore associated scientific thought with more noteworthy human achievements.

Frazier's understanding of the relationship between magic and religion was structured according to a linear evolutionary framework composed of three forms of thought: magical, religious, and scientific. He postulated that magical thought, the earliest stage of human development, was replaced by religious thought as people observed its failures and came to believe that they could propitiate gods in order to control nature. Religious thought was then replaced by scientific thought as human beings understood natural laws.

Frazier is also noted for his insights about the thought processes that magic involves. His ideas about causality in magical thought continue to be important to arguments about differences in forms, or systems, of thought in various cultures. He observed that magic was based on two sets of assumptions about the way magic worked, which he called laws. The first was the law of similarity (characterized by homeopathic or imitative magic) and the second was the law of contact (characterized by contagious magic). In homeopathic magic he stated that "like produced like," where a thing with a property or quality similar to another thing was thought to be able to influence it. In contagious magic, a thing in physical contact with another thing was thought to be able to influence it later and at a physical distance. He observed that scientific reasoning involved a comparable thinking process, or "association of ideas," and for that reason viewed magic and science as fundamentally different from religion, which involved human beings' propitiation of superior powers.

By the turn of the century the writings of scholars with a sociological orientation increasingly became more important. They based the distinction between magic and religion on its function and on the context of its performance. For Marcel Mauss (1872–1950), magic was private and secret, and did not contribute to group activities and organizations. Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) similarly viewed magic as an individual practice in contrast to religion, which he saw to be collective. Max Weber (1864–1920) was interested in comparing the practice of magic and religion in precapitalist and capitalist societies. He observed that magic was dominant in precapitalist societies, and was on the decline in capitalist societies along with what he called the increased "rationalization of economic life."