In Magic’s Reason, Graham M. Jones tells the entwined stories of anthropology and entertainment magic. The two pursuits are not as separate as they may seem at first. As Jones shows, they not only matured around the same time, but they also shared mutually reinforcing stances toward modernity and rationality. It is no historical accident, for example, that colonial ethnographers drew analogies between Western magicians and native ritual performers, who, in their view, hoodwinked gullible people into believing their sleight of hand was divine. Using French magicians’ engagements with North African ritual performers as a case study, Jones shows how magic became enshrined in anthropological reasoning. Acknowledging the residue of magic’s colonial origins doesn’t require us to dispense with it. Rather, through this radical reassessment of classic anthropological ideas, Magic’s Reason develops a new perspective on the promise and peril of cross-cultural comparison.

In Between Magic and Reality, Vibeke Steffen, Steffen Jöhncke, and Kirsten Marie Raahauge bring together a diverse range of ethnographies that examine and explore the forms of reflection, action, and interaction that govern the ways different contemporary societies create and challenge the limits of reason. The essays here visit an impressive array of settings, including international scientific laboratories, British spiritualist meetings, Chinese villages, Danish rehabilitation centers, and Uzbeki homes, where they encounter a diverse assortment of people whose beliefs and concerns exhibit an unusual but central contemporary dichotomy: scientific reason versus spiritual/paranormal belief. Exploring the paradoxical way these modes of thought push against reason's boundaries, they offer a deep look at the complex ways they coexist, contest one another, and are ultimately intertwined. Vibeke Steffen is associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Copenhagen, where Steffen Jöncke is senior advisor. Kirsten Marie Raahauge is associate professor in the School of Design at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen.

This study of the origins and progress of Greek science focuses especially on the interaction between scientific and traditional patterns of thought from the sixth to the fourth century BC. It begins with an examination of how particular Greek authors deployed the category of "magic," sometimes attacking its beliefs and practices; these attacks are then related to their background in Greek medicine and philosophical thought. In his second chapter Lloyd outlines developments in the theory and practice of argument in Greek science and assesses their significance. He next discuses the progress of empirical research as a scientific tool from the Presocratics to Aristotle. Finally, he considers why the Greeks invented science, their contribution to its history, and the social, economic, ideological and political factors that had a bearing on its growth.

Reason Cansino must uncover the secret of the magic in her family's background to save the lives of her friends Tom and Jay-tee.

In the second volume of Larbalestier's Magic trilogy, Reason Cansino has learned the painful truth: she must make the choice to use the magic that lives in her blood and die young or refuse to use the magic and lose her mind.

This book offers a systematic and critical discussion of Peter Winch's writings on the philosophy of the social sciences. The author points to Winch's tendency to over-emphasize the importance of language and communication, and his insufficient attention to the role of practical, technological activites in human life and society. It also offers an appendix devoted to the controversy between the anthropologists Marshall Sahlins and Gananath Obeyesekere regarding Captain James Cook's Hawaiian adventures. Essential reading for those studying the development of philosophy in the twentieth century, this book will also be of great interest to anthropologists, sociologists, scholars of religion, and all those with an interest in the relationship between philosophy and the social sciences.

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.

A mysterious mob boss from Chicago is hellbent on eliminating Diva Delaney and he’ll stop at nothing to get the job done. She’ll have to travel to the UK Council headquarters to speak to someone who might be able to shed some light on the coven her nemesis comes from. During her meeting with the reclusive warlock, Diva accidentally triggers an event that will irrevocably shape her future. Any attempts to alter her fate will bring dire consequences. She’s going to have to let it run its course and see what the eventual outcome will be. No one will be exempt from her war with the gangster. Any of her friends, family members and random acquaintances could become a target. Diva will need to discover her foe’s secret identity if she hopes to have a chance to take him down before he can destroy her. He’s so well guarded that the task won’t be easy, but no one can hide from her physic abilities forever. cozy paranormal mysteries, cozy mystery, witches wizards warlocks, supernatural occult paranormal, female sleuth, spells magic, ghosts spirits phantoms poltergeist

A great many theorists have argued that the defining feature of modernity is that people no longer believe in spirits, myths, or magic. Jason Ā. Josephson-Storm argues that as broad cultural history goes, this narrative is wrong, as attempts to suppress magic have failed more often than they have succeeded. Even the human sciences have been more enchanted than is commonly supposed. But that raises the question: How did a magical, spiritualist, mesmerized Europe ever convince itself that it was disenchanted? Josephson-Storm traces the history of the myth of disenchantment in the births of philosophy, anthropology, sociology, folklore, psychoanalysis, and religious studies. Ironically, the myth of mythless modernity formed at the very time that Britain, France, and Germany were in the midst of occult and spiritualist revivals. Indeed, Josephson-Storm argues, these disciplines’ founding figures were not only aware of, but profoundly enmeshed in, the occult milieu; and it was specifically in response to this burgeoning culture of spirits and magic that they produced notions of a disenchanted world. By providing a novel history of the human sciences and their connection to esotericism, The Myth of Disenchantment dispatches with most widely held accounts of modernity and its break from the premodern past.

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.