Magic, Science And Religion And Other Essays

I've always been interested in how primitive man operated. Well this book sheds some light on that. The author Bronisław Malinowski writes about his experiences studying primitive tribes from the early 1900s. He talks about these tribes and their religious beliefs. Mainly how the primitive tribes he studied used religion, superstition and magic instead of logic in order to explain the world in which they lived. One of the big parts of the book that stood out to me was how the primitive tribes that Malinowski was studying didn't understand impregnation or had ignorance of conception. Malinowski accounts for how the tribe thought it was possible for a woman to get pregnant through religious/superstitious beings that they believed in and that a man didn't need to be part of the situation via sexual intercourse. Basically the tribe didn't understand or was ignorant to the fact that a man through sexual intercourse impregnates a woman only.

After reading this book I now see how primitive man used religious beliefs, superstitions, and magic in order to deal with life's uncertainties, fears and bad times instead of using logic. In this book you will see how the primitive tribes that Malinowski encountered were ignorant to a lot of things in life and used superstition, magic and religion in order to deal with life instead of reasoning and logic.

The book is somewhat knocking primitive tribes but at the same time it is showing you how not so great primitive man was. There might not be the mental illnesses or disease that we have in our society in these primitive tribes but ignorance and making life harder via ignorance for primitive man was still a factor.

I think there is a lot to learn from primitive man but at the same time there is a lot of things primitive man thought that were wrong starting with superstitious belief systems. Also you can see how man made religion works so well on human beings by reading this book because it seems like man is hard wired to be religious or superstitious in order to deal with the unknown or fears of life.

Free pdf version link: https://monoskop.org/images/4/41/Malinowski_Bronislaw_Magic_Science_and_Religion_and_Other_Essays_1948.pdf

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