A Cognitive Theory of Magic

By (author) Jesper Sørensen

Paperback - £41.00

Publication date:

27 November 2006

Length of book:

232 pages

Publisher

AltaMira Press

ISBN-13: 9780759110403

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 Sørensen 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.
In this fine and erudite work, Jesper Sørensen wrestles with the problem of how cognitive theories can provide novel and fascinating insights about the cross-cultural aspects of magic. It demonstrates how a theoretically informed understanding of the general processes of human cognition leads to some surprising and exciting discoveries not only about the widespread phenomenon of magical thought, but also about how the human mind works in the presence of puzzling behavior that escapes the net of common sense conjectures. Sørensen is an able representative of the next generation of cognitive scientists who have thrown caution to the winds in their search of explanations of religious, ritual and magical acts.