Magic, science, religion / by Ira Livingston.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Livingston, Ira, 1956- author.

Series:

Experimental practices (Brill Rodopi (Firm)) ; 1873-8788 v. 2.

Experimental Practices, 1873-8788 ; volume 2

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Magic--Social aspects.

Magic.

Science and magic.

Magic--Religious aspects.

Religion and science.

Science--Social aspects.

Science.

Physical Description:

ix, 175 pages ; 25 cm.

Other Title:

Magic science religion

Place of Publication:

Leiden ; Boston : Brill Rodopi, [2018]

©2018.

Summary:

"Magic, Science, Religion explores surprising intersections among the three meaning-making and world-making practices named in the title. Through colorful examples, the book reveals circuitous ways that social, cultural and natural systems connect, enabling real kinds of magic to operate. Among the many case studies are accounts of how an eighteenth-century actor gave his audience goosebumps; how painters, poets, and pool sharks use nonlinearity in working their magics; how the first vertebrates gained consciousness; how plants fine-tuned human color vision; and the necessarily magical element of activism that builds on the conviction that "another future is possible" while working to push self-fulfilling prophecy into political action"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

1 All or Nothing? p. 1

2 Kindness p. 2

ASIDE: The Two-Million-Dollar Comma p. 2

ASIDE: Sufficiently Magical Technologies p. 3

ASIDE: Our Gods p. 4

3 Cruelty p. 6

ASIDE: Ghostly Causality p. 7

ASIDE: Durable Cruelties p. 8

4 Beginning, Again p. 14

ASIDE: Chaos Invoked p. 14

5 The Freedom Not to Choose p. 15

ASIDE: No Atheists in Foxholes p. 16

ASIDE: Blake on Firm Perswasion p. 17

ASIDE: Metafictional Magic: The Writer's Will p. 19

ASIDE: Shapely Sentences p. 21

ASIDE: Beckett Meets Twilight Zone, Glass-Half-Full Version p. 23

2 Complex Systems in a Nutshell p. 25

1 Horror Movie Reboot p. 25

2 Interpositivity p. 25

ASIDE: Interpositivity p. 27

3 Becoming a System p. 27

4 Creatures of Light p. 29

ASIDE: Transformative for Whom? p. 30

ASIDE: Plant Sorcery p. 31

5 Tornados, Whirlpools, and Fires p. 32

ASIDE: iii p. 33

ASIDE: Co-evolution p. 34

6 Leveled p. 35

ASIDE: On being born too early and dying too late p. 36

ASIDE: Up Around the Bend p. 37

7 A Personifying Universe of Stretchy Things p. 38

8 Dynamism p. 40

ASIDE: One Plus One Equals Infinity p. 41

9 Magic, but No Black Boxes p. 41

ASIDE: The T-Shirt Version p. 43

10 Wildness p. 43

ASIDE: Pet Resemblance via Social Theory p. 44

3 Magic by Example p. 46

1 Failed Magic: Modernist Heaven (and Hell) p. 46

2 Placebo Magic p. 50

ASIDE: Pregnancy via Magic p. 52

ASIDE: Following the Scent p. 53

3 Mirror Magic p. 54

4 Biting Game p. 59

5 Dog Whisperer p. 61

4 Future Perfect p. 63

1 The Gettysburg Address as a Magical Speech Act p. 63

2 Pool, Poetry, Prose, and Painting p. 64

ASIDE: Dr. Livingston's Magical Bank-Shot Visualizer p. 65

3 Meteors, Messiahs, and Migraines p. 69

ASIDE: On This Rock I Build My Church p. 69

ASIDE: Falling Off a Log p. 71

4 Magical Militarism p. 72

5 Four Asides p. 74

ASIDE: Dr. Livingston's Time Travel 101 p. 74

ASIDE: A Somewhat Rationalizing Account of Mystical Nonviolence p. 76

ASIDE: A Somewhat Mysticizing Account of Rationalist Nonviolence p. 77

ASIDE: Four Scholars p. 78

5 What is Religion? p. 82

1 A Fuzzy Set p. 82

2 Magic, Science, and Religion Coevolve p. 83

3 Restoring the Chaos p. 84

4 Rain Dance p. 87

ASIDE: From Flow p. 89

5 Providence, via Vico p. 91

ASIDE: Systematizers Systematized p. 93

6 God 3.5B (A Nearsighted Evolutionary Panorama) p. 97

1 Salience to Sentience p. 97

2 Primordial Systemhood Membership Narratives p. 100

ASIDE: Law and Order p. 101

3 The Myth of the Acquisition-of-Consciousness Moment p. 103

4 Use of the Terms I and We p. 104

5 Cis-Systems → Trans-Systems p. 105

6 First Caveat: Characters p. 106

7 Plant and Animal Intelligence p. 107

8 Learning and Evolution from a Systems Perspective p. 108

9 Second Caveat: Plot p. 111

10 Especially Informative Postinfundibular Amphioxus Hypothalamus Neuropile p. 114

11 The Holy Grail p. 120

ASIDE: Neuro-X p. 121

12 Teamlikeness p. 124

ASIDE: Play and Teamlikeness p. 125

ASIDE: Three-Ring Circuits p. 126

7 Blake Magic p. 138

1 Famous in Heaven p. 138

ASIDE: No Success Like Failure p. 139

2 Blake Magic p. 140

3 Auguries p. 143

ASIDE: Prophecies p. 145

4 Angel Kings p. 146

5 Magic in the Current Conjuncture p. 149

6 Five Asides p. 154

ASIDE: An Elegant Pose p. 157

ASIDE: Ritual Retraction p. 158

ASIDE: Obscurity p. 160

ASIDE: Butterfly Tornado p. 161.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Livingston, Ira, 1956- author. Magic, science, religion

ISBN:

9789004357105

9004357106

OCLC:

1004260362