The Belief in Magic in the Age of Science

Abstract

ArticleIn this article, attempt is made to show that the belief in magic is a fundamental feature of the human mind (the "fundamentality hypothesis"). Even those who explicitly consider themselves to be completely rational individuals implicitly still harbor a belief in magical powers. It is also argued that magical thinking and magical beliefs are different psychological constructs. Whereas magical thinking might have important implications for learning, the belief in magic affects communication in modern societies. Finally, the areas of practice are outlined in which magical thinking and implicit or explicit magical beliefs can be engaged, such as education, political influence, commerce, military and political terror, and entertainment. The Starting Point: Theoretical Issues and Empirical Evidence of Hidden Magical Beliefs in Modern People Concepts and ProblemsIn the modern view, magical causality comprises events that violate known physical, biological, and psychological principles and conventions. Affecting or creating physical objects directly through the effort of thought, will, wishes, or words (mind-over-matter magic); affecting people's lives and health through prayer, magic spells, and rituals, or by promising reinforcement in the afterlife (communicative magic); and harming or helping people by manipulating the objects that those people were in contact with, such as their hair, clothes, or shadow (contagion magic) are just a few kinds of magical events (Frazer, 1890(Frazer, /1959Lévy-Brühl, 1923/1966Nemeroff & Rozin, 2000;Piaget, 1929Piaget, /1971Subbotsky, 2010a). The contrast between magical causality and physical causality cannot be properly understood without realization that the belief in magical causality goes back for about 30,000 years, to the Upper Paleolithic period, when people populated nature with spiritual agents that could think or wish; that is, they attributed to inanimate things a certain "theory of mind," a concept that is alien to the objects of science. The assumption that physical objects at the receptive end of a causal event have some kind of consciousness is what distinguishes magical causality from physical causality.1 By addressing their pleas to the Gods and spirits, people tried to beg favors (good weather, good health, luck in hunting) from natural objects. In return, people were prepared to obey when the Gods and spirits spoke to them, either directly or indirectly through medicine men, kings, or wizards. From this it follows that from the beginning, magical causality had two dimensions: natural (people's magical communication with nature) and social (people's magical communication with other people; Boyer, 1994;Boyer & Walker, 2000;Tambiah, 1990).Whereas ordinary fantasy involves mental processing of ordinary characters or events (e.g., a child having AbstractThe widely spread view on magical beliefs in modern industrial cultures contends that magical beliefs are a bunch of curious phenomena that persist today as an unnecessary addition to a much more important set of...

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