“Magic, Religion, and Science” is a survey of the anthropological, archaeological, historical, and literary evidence for organized systems of knowledge, such as those traditionally circumscribed under the rubrics of “magic,” “religion,” and “science,” which reflect how humans perceive the world and their place within it.
The fact that all three of these categories are factitious (that is, made up) is evident from the rampant misuse of the terms that circumscribe them across a variety of linguistic and cultural boundaries, and the perennial frustration of scholars and other producers of knowledge to define them in a way that reflects their actual usage in the wild.
The survey therefore begins with a discussion of these three categories, how they have been used and misused, and what family resemblances they have to one other, in addition to ways in which they differ from one another. The survey then focuses on the first category, how we perceive instances of it within the shared tangible and intangible cultural heritage of humanity, and how we have historically employed it to influence our environments and each other through thoughts, words, and other actions.
About Charles G. Häberl
Charles G. Häberl is a Professor at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey in New Brunswick, and President of the International Linguistic Association. He is a scholar of Aramaic and of the Aramaic-speaking religious communities of the Middle East, including and especially the Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran, as well as the Christians of Mardin province in southern Turkey and the Qalamoun mountains in Syria. After completing his AB at Brown University in 1998 and his AM and PhD at Harvard University in 2006, he joined the faculty at Rutgers and has served as the Director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies and as Chair of the department of African, Middle Eastern, and South Asian Languages and Literatures. In 2016, he received the Anna-Maria Kellen Fellowship from the American Academy in Berlin and in 2022 the Willis F. Doney Fellowship from the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. He has authored or co-edited six books, including The Book of Kings and the Explanations of this World and (with James F. McGrath) The Mandaean Book of John, and numerous articles.