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How did James George Frazer describe the historical relationship among magic, religion, and science?
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Anthropology
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology director Svante Pӓӓbo posing with a model of a Neanderthal skeleton.
In his seminal work, The Golden Bough, the British anthropologist Sir James George Frazer proposed an evolutionary model of human thought, suggesting that societies progress through three distinct stages: magic, religion, and science.12
Frazer characterized this relationship as follows:
- Magic: He viewed magic as a "pseudo-science" and an early stage of human development. He defined it as an attempt to control natural events through technical acts based on faulty reasoning.23
- Religion: Frazer argued that as intelligent individuals became disillusioned with the failure of magical practices to control the world, they turned to religion. He defined religion as an appeal for help to spiritual beings, effectively replacing the "human-centered" egoism of magic with "god-centered" supplication.23
- Science: Ultimately, he posited that science would supersede both magic and religion as the final, rational mode of understanding the world.42
While this evolutionary sequence is no longer accepted by modern anthropologists, Frazer’s distinction between these modes of thought remains a significant, albeit debated, framework in the history of social science.42