Magic, science and religion, and other essays | Bronislaw Malinowski

Magic, science and religion, and other essays | Bronislaw Malinowski | The Finest Story in the World

books:

Magic, science and...

	Magic, science and religion, and other essays Bronislaw Malinowski Doubleday Anchor Books, 1955 - 274 pages average customer review:based on 3 reviews
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The author takes into account the various views of religion which Tylor, Frazer, Marett, and Durkheim have given and goes on from there to provide his own conception that religion and magic are ways men have to make the world acceptable.

Malinowski's "Magic, Science, and Religion"

The title essay was probably the single most influential article written by Bronislaw Malinowski. This 1992 reprint edition from Waveland Press is most welcome. The ideas in this essay have become so commonplace in anthropology that nobody seems to find it necessary to refer back to their original source in Malinowski. The essay itself is lively and still sounds fresh some three-quarters of a century after it was written. Malinowski is convincing when he points to ways that magic, science, and religion are closely related. After reading his insights, it isn't possible to consider that any one of them should always be given priority over the other two in our ways of thinking about the universe. Read this book and you'll learn some of the reasons why people try to solve their problems by choosing magic, science, or religion according to the specific circumstances in which they find themselves.

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The Finest Story in the World

An easy way to discover one of the most important ethnologists, and what ethnology is about: studying "primitive" societies to find out the rules that govern ours. Two examples: religions tell groups how to help members facing difficult times take decisions that won't be detrimental to the community; myths make a community's guiding principles unquestionable (in the 19th century when "nationalities" were invented they were given ancestors and histories).

well written