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The Scientific Theory Of Magic
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Book Synopsis A Cognitive Theory of Magic by : Jesper Sørensen
Download or read book A Cognitive Theory of Magic written by Jesper Sørensen and published by Rowman Altamira. This book was released on 2007 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Magic is a universal phenomenon. Everywhere we look people perform ritual actions in which desirable qualities are transferred by means of physical contact and objects or persons are manipulated by things of their likeness. In this book S rensen embraces a cognitive perspective in order to investigate this long-established but controversial topic. Following a critique of the traditional approaches to magic, and basing his claims on classical ethnographic cases, the author explains magic's universality by examining a number of recurrent cognitive processes underlying its different manifestations. He focuses on how power is infused into the ritual practice; how representations of contagion and similarity can be used to connect otherwise distinct objects in order to manipulate one by the other; and how the performance of ritual prompts representations of magical actions as effective. Bringing these features together, the author proposes a cognitive theory of how people can represent magical rituals as purposeful actions and how ritual actions are integrated into more complex representations of events. This explanation, in turn, yields new insights into the constitutive role of magic in the formation of institutionalised religious ritual.
Book Synopsis Experiencing the Impossible by : Gustav Kuhn
Download or read book Experiencing the Impossible written by Gustav Kuhn and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-03-12 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How the scientific study of magic reveals intriguing—and often unsettling—insights into the mysteries of the human mind. What do we see when we watch a magician pull a rabbit out of a hat or read a person's mind? We are captivated by an illusion; we applaud the fact that we have been fooled. Why do we enjoy experiencing what seems clearly impossible, or at least beyond our powers of explanation? In Experiencing the Impossible, Gustav Kuhn examines the psychological processes that underpin our experience of magic. Kuhn, a psychologist and a magician, reveals the intriguing—and often unsettling—insights into the human mind that the scientific study of magic provides.Magic, Kuhn explains, creates a cognitive conflict between what we believe to be true (for example, a rabbit could not be in that hat) and what we experience (a rabbit has just come out of that hat!). Drawing on the latest psychological, neurological, and philosophical research, he suggests that misdirection is at the heart of all magic tricks, and he offers a scientific theory of misdirection. He explores, among other topics, our propensity for magical thinking, the malleability of our perceptual experiences, forgetting and misremembering, free will and mind control, and how magic is applied outside entertaiment—the use of illusion in human-computer interaction, politics, warfare, and elsewhere. We may be surprised to learn how little of the world we actually perceive, how little we can trust what we see and remember, and how little we are in charge of our thoughts and actions. Exploring magic, Kuhn illuminates the complex—and almost magical—mechanisms underlying our daily activities.
Book Synopsis The Supernatural Science by : David Barreto
Download or read book The Supernatural Science written by David Barreto and published by David Barreto. This book was released on 2019-03-10 with total page 127 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A must-read book that explores mediumship, psychic abilities, witchcraft spells, and even ghosts through the lens of scientific thinking.
Book Synopsis The Scientific Theory of Magic by : Sathwik Thomas
Download or read book The Scientific Theory of Magic written by Sathwik Thomas and published by . This book was released on 2020-09-06 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Magic may not be magic at all, but ability that people have lost over time. What if you are really more powerful than you ever imagined? Humanity believes humans are the top of the food chain. The most intelligent, conquerors of their natural environment. But the evidence of hurricanes, floods, storms, and in particular Global Warming suggest otherwise.This book suggests that our recorded history may have only served to convince us that we were not, at some time in the distant past, much more powerful than we are now. The Scientific Theory of Magic is a story about what may have been, and what might happen, if human beings could get their superiority out of the way, and reconnect with their natural state. The story follows a set of twins who were born with an understanding and perception that is totally different from the people around them, even their mother, and how a set of circumstances forces these twins to change the world.The twins can do amazing things, until one of them is kept in a medically induced stupor by the state. Then, everything changes.The Scientific Theory of Magic presents verified scientific evidence that there is something going on in our brains and bodies that we can't even begin to understand. But if we want to survive what the planet is about to throw at us, we may want to try to increase our understanding of the infinite human capability we each possess.
Book Synopsis A General Theory of Magic by : Marcel Mauss
Download or read book A General Theory of Magic written by Marcel Mauss and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2005-07-05 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First written by Marcel Mauss and Henri Humbert in 1902, A General Theory of Magic gained a wide new readership when republished by Mauss in 1950. As a study of magic in 'primitive' societies and its survival today in our thoughts and social actions, it represents what Claude Lévi-Strauss called, in an introduction to that edition, the astonishing modernity of the mind of one of the century's greatest thinkers. The book offers a fascinating snapshot of magic throughout various cultures as well as deep sociological and religious insights still very much relevant today. At a period when art, magic and science appear to be crossing paths once again, A General Theory of Magic presents itself as a classic for our times.
Book Synopsis The Scientific Theory of Magic by : Sathwik Thomas
Download or read book The Scientific Theory of Magic written by Sathwik Thomas and published by . This book was released on 2021-01-14 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Within a system of natural selection, where the strong and the most fit survive and the weak perish and die, is it possible for any species to decide to be the strongest? This is what David and Laura must do in a brutal world where humans have ravaged the planet, and must adapt or die. But how should they adapt? Do they leave their humanity behind, or become even more human? After losing their entire family, their home, and their way of life, these two must face the difficult choice of all. If magic isn't magic at all, but pure science that we have lost our ability to understand, then is magic possible after all? The Scientific Theory of Magic series explores whether this is happening, or possibly has already happened. The legends, myths, and pagan rituals may have been more about communication with the power of the Earth, and less about superstition and magic than we want to believe.David and Laura find themselves at this crucial crossroad in human history. The ancient past, from time long before written history, to the climate ravaged present, humanity finds itself with a choice. Evolve, change, or try to stay the same, and possibly die off. And if they change, will they still be human? It truly is a war, between dark forces and enlightened forces, between the old humanity and the new. The war is fought with fire and blood, but the real weapon is choice.The enlightened forces want peace, the dark forces want to exterminate all of the old humankind, and the soldier Aletha just wants revenge. Each will make a choice after chasing each other through mud and acid rain, reliving the tale of how modern society became so isolated and fragmented from each other. And how, power is the real wedge between us, not human nature.This is a continuation of the original book in the series, The Scientific Theory of Magic: Evolution or Devolution. It fills in the gaps between where we left the original band of magicians and the two hundred years that followed, ending in a complete breakdown of society and infrastructure. The War for Humanity take s a close look at what life might be like if we return to our natural state, and give up the mad power-grab for control that we all seem to love so much.
Download or read book Magic in Theory written by Peter Lamont and published by Univ of Hertfordshire Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A useful manual for any magician or curious spectator who wonders why the tricks seem so real, this guide examines the psychological aspects of a magician’s work. Exploring the ways in which human psychology plays into the methods of conjuring rather than focusing on the individual tricks alone, this explanation of the general principles of magic includes chapters on the use of misdirection, sleight of hand, and reconstruction, provides a better understanding of this ancient art, and offers a section on psychics that warns of their deceptive magic skills.
Download or read book Magic written by Ernesto De Martino and published by Hau. This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Making Magic written by Randall Styers and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2004-01-15 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the emergence of religious studies and the social sciences as academic disciplines, the concept of "magic" has played a major role in defining religion and in mediating the relation of religion to science. Across these disciplines, magic has regularly been configured as a definitively non-modern phenomenon, juxtaposed to distinctly modern models of religion and science. Yet this notion of magic has remained stubbornly amorphous. In Making Magic, Randall Styers seeks to account for the extraordinary vitality of scholarly discourse purporting to define and explain magic despite its failure to do just that. He argues that this persistence can best be explained in light of the Western drive to establish and secure distinctive norms for modern identity, norms based on narrow forms of instrumental rationality, industrious labor, rigidly defined sexual roles, and the containment of wayward forms of desire. Magic has served to designate a form of alterity or deviance against which dominant Western notions of appropriate religious piety, legitimate scientific rationality, and orderly social relations are brought into relief. Scholars have found magic an invaluable tool in their efforts to define the appropriate boundaries of religion and science. On a broader level, says Styers, magical thinking has served as an important foil for modernity itself. Debates over the nature of magic have offered a particularly rich site at which scholars have worked to define and to contest the nature of modernity and norms for life in the modern world.
Book Synopsis Science of the Magical by : Matt Kaplan
Download or read book Science of the Magical written by Matt Kaplan and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-10-25 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "From the author of The Science of Monsters, this engaging scientific inquiry provides a definitive look into the elements of mystical places and magical object--from the philosopher's stone, to love potions to the oracles--from ancient history, mythology, and contemporary culture. Can migrations of birds foretell our future? Do phases of the moon hold sway over our lives? Are there sacred springs that cure the ill? What is the best way to brew a love potion? How do we create mutant humans who regenerate like Wolverine? In Science of the Magical, noted science journalist Matt Kaplan plumbs the rich, lively, and surprising history of the magical objects, places, and rituals that infuse ancient and contemporary myth. Like Ken Jennings and Mary Roach, Kaplan serves as a friendly armchair guide to the world of the supernatural. From the strengthening powers of Viking mead, to the super soldiers in movies like Captain America, Kaplan ranges across cultures and time periods to point out that there is often much more to these enduring magical narratives than mere fantasy. Informative and entertaining, Science of the Magical explores our world through the compelling scope of natural and human history and cutting-edge science."--
Book Synopsis Stolen Lightning by : Daniel Lawrence O'Keefe
Download or read book Stolen Lightning written by Daniel Lawrence O'Keefe and published by Vintage. This book was released on 1983 with total page 598 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An interdisciplinary investigation of the role of magic in human societies, past and present, asserts that magic remains an important element in contemporary civilizations
Book Synopsis The Occult Mind by : Christopher I. Lehrich
Download or read book The Occult Mind written by Christopher I. Lehrich and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2012-08-24 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Given the historical orientation of philosophy, is it unreasonable to suggest a wider cast of the net into the deep waters of magic? By encountering magical thought as theory, we come to a new understanding of a thought that looks back at us from a funhouse mirror."—The Occult Mind Divination, like many critical modes, involves reading signs, and magic, more generally, can be seen as a kind of criticism that takes the universe—seen and unseen, known and unknowable—as its text. In The Occult Mind, Christopher I. Lehrich explores the history of magic in Western thought, suggesting a bold new understanding of the claims made about the power of various belief systems. In closely interlinked essays on such disparate topics as ley lines, the Tarot, the Corpus Hermeticum, writing and ritual in magical practice, and early attempts to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics, Lehrich treats magic and its parts as an intellectual object that requires interpretive zeal on the part of readers/observers. Drawing illuminating parallels between the practice of magic and more recent interpretive systems—structuralism, deconstruction, semiotics—Lehrich deftly suggests that the specter of magic haunts all such attempts to grasp the character of knowledge. Offering a radical new approach to the nature and value of occult thought, Lehrich's brilliantly conceived and executed book posits magic as a mode of theory that is intrinsically subversive of normative conceptions of reason and truth. In elucidating the deep parallels between occult thought and academic discourse, Lehrich demonstrates that sixteenth-century occult philosophy often touched on issues that have become central to philosophical discourse only in the past fifty years.
Book Synopsis The Psychology of Magic and the Magic of Psychology by : Amir Raz
Download or read book The Psychology of Magic and the Magic of Psychology written by Amir Raz and published by Frontiers Media SA. This book was released on 2016-11-18 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Magicians have dazzled audiences for many centuries; however, few researchers have studied how, let alone why, most tricks work. The psychology of magic is a nascent field of research that examines the underlying mechanisms that conjurers use to achieve enchanting phenomena, including sensory illusions, misdirection of attention, and the appearance of mind-control and nuanced persuasion. Most studies to date have focused on either the psychological principles involved in watching and performing magic or “neuromagic” - the neural correlates of such phenomena. Whereas performers sometimes question the contributions that modern science may offer to the advancement of the magical arts, the history of magic reveals that scientific discovery often charts new territories for magicians. In this research topic we sketch out the symbiotic relationship between psychological science and the art of magic. On the one hand, magic can inform psychology, with particular benefits for the cognitive, social, developmental, and transcultural components of behavioural science. Magicians have a large and robust set of effects that most researchers rarely exploit. Incorporating these effects into existing experimental, even clinical, paradigms paves the road to innovative trajectories in the study of human behaviour. For example, magic provides an elegant way to study the behaviour of participants who may believe they had made choices that they actually did not make. Moreover, magic fosters a more ecological approach to experimentation whereby scientists can probe participants in more natural environments compared to the traditional lab-based settings. Examining how magicians consistently influence spectators, for example, can elucidate important aspects in the study of persuasion, trust, decision-making, and even processes spanning authorship and agency. Magic thus offers a largely underused armamentarium for the behavioural scientist and clinician. On the other hand, psychological science can advance the art of magic. The psychology of deception, a relatively understudied field, explores the intentional creation of false beliefs and how people often go wrong. Understanding how to methodically exploit the tenuous twilight zone of human vulnerabilities – perceptual, logical, emotional, and temporal – becomes all the more revealing when top-down influences, including expectation, symbolic thinking, and framing, join the fray. Over the years, science has permitted magicians to concoct increasingly effective routines and to elicit heightened feelings of wonder from audiences. Furthermore, on occasion science leads to the creation of novel effects, or the refinement of existing ones, based on systematic methods. For example, by simulating a specific card routine using a series of computer stimuli, researchers have decomposed the effect and reconstructed it into a more effective routine. Other magic effects depend on meaningful psychological knowledge, such as which type of information is difficult to retain or what changes capture attention. Behavioural scientists measure and study these factors. By combining analytical findings with performer intuitions, psychological science begets effective magic. Whereas science strives on parsimony and independent replication of results, magic thrives on reproducing the same effect with multiple methods to obscure parsimony and minimise detection. This Research Topic explores the seemingly orthogonal approaches of scientists and magicians by highlighting the crosstalk as well as rapprochement between psychological science and the art of deception.
Book Synopsis The Magic of Reality by : Richard Dawkins
Download or read book The Magic of Reality written by Richard Dawkins and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-09-11 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author addresses key scientific questions previously explained by rich mythologies, from the evolution of the first humans and the life cycle of stars to the principles of a rainbow and the origins of the universe.
Book Synopsis Magic, Science and Religion and Other Essays by : Bronislaw Malinowski
Download or read book Magic, Science and Religion and Other Essays written by Bronislaw Malinowski and published by Read Books Ltd. This book was released on 2014-04-10 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This vintage book comprises three famous Malinowski essays on the subject of religion. Malinowski is one of the most important and influential anthropologists of all time. He is particularly renowned for his ability to combine the reality of human experience, with the cold calculations of science. An important collection of three of his most famous essays, "Magic, Science and Religion" provides its reader with a series of concepts concerning religion, magic, science, rite and myth. This is undertaken in an attempt to form a definite impression and understanding of the Trobrianders of New Guinea. The chapters of this book include: "Magic, Science and Religion", "Primitive Man and his Religion", "Rational Mastery by Man of his Surroundings", "Faith and Cult", "The Creative Acts of Religion", "Providence in Primitive Life", "Man's Selective Interest in Nature", etcetera. This book is being republished now in an affordable, modern edition - complete with a specially commissioned new biography of the author.
Book Synopsis The Book of Immortality by : Adam Gollner
Download or read book The Book of Immortality written by Adam Gollner and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-09-30 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of one of the most universal human obsessions charts the rise of longevity science from its alchemical beginnings to modern-day genetic interventions and enters the world of those whose lives are shaped by a belief in immortality.
Download or read book The Sorcerer's Tale written by Alec Ryrie and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An earl's son, plotting murder by witchcraft; conjuring spirits to find buried treasure; a stolen coat embroidered with pure silver; crooked gaming-houses and brothels; a terrifying new disease, and the self-trained surgeon who claims he can treat it. This is the world of Gregory Wisdom, a physician, magician, and consummate con-man in sixteenth-century London. Drawing on previously unknown documents to reconstruct this extraordinary man's career, Alec Ryrie takes us through the cut-throat business of early modern medicine, down to Tudor London's gangland of fraud and organized crime; from the world of Renaissance magi and Kabbalistic conjurers to street-corner wizards; and into the chaotic, exhilarating religious upheavals of the Reformation. On the way, we learn how Tudor England's dignified public face and its rapacious underworld were intimately connected to each other. Gregory Wisdom's career is an object lesson in how to conjure up wealth and respectability from nothing in a turbulent age. Praised as "an excellent snapshot of a time intrigued by the spiritual realm" (Los Angeles Times), this is a unique glimpse into a world intoxicated by new ideas.
