Do Men Need Magical Thinking?


Image result for melisandre meme
Red witch Melisandre can hide her real look <Game of Throne>

This chapter,  from Primitive Man and his Behavior, argues how magical thinking is neither the inadequacy of thinking nor the developmental gap between technique and reasons. Rather, it is "the necessary product of the tendency, as yet undivided, to control both nature and one’s own behavior, from the primitive union of “naive psychology and naive physics.” (Thurnwald cited by Vygotsky, 1930). In this manner, science today might be another form of "magic". It is not the inadequacy of thinking. Rather, it is the unity of the tendency of controlling the nature and controlling our own behaviors.

After class discussion:
Human cannot survive by magical thinking. Magical thinking is the pre-logical thinking.

I also like the break of the bias that the tribes are "undeveloped humans" could keep us blind from how civilized people come to where we are. It reminded me what Bronisław Malinowski (1992) said, "perhaps through realising human nature in a shape very distant and foreign to us, we shall have some light shed on our own."

More questions:
1. I was wondering how this chapter is related to understanding of meta-cognition. And what's the connection anyway?
- Meta-cognition was not traced back to primitive men. Meta-cognition is a modern metaphor.

2. I am having hard time understanding set-based thinking. Is this idea similar to situated cognition?
- Set-based thinking is like human's tendency of figuring out the relationship between objects by categorization. Human needs categories to be able to solve problems.

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