Caelum Rainieri wrote:
>
> It was your buttonholing of something into a polarity of being either
> an art or a science.
>
> - That's what our educational system, and our libraries do, Al.
>
I somehow doubt that they categorize all human activity and knowledge
as one of two things.
> As to anthropologists documenting what they have witnessed, that is
> quite easy. They literally document what they have witnessed. If you
> really mean the mental state of those doing the activities that they
> have witnessed, that's impossible but it is for any activity. You can
> document what people do, what they say, how they interact, but you
> cannot document anyone's state of mind. That's just a given.
>
>
> - Yes, which is why the process is flawed. They cannot observe
> without impacting what they see, and they cannot document what
> they cannot see, which is where magic happens.
>
There are many assumptions here that aren't being questioned. Even
assuming magic exists (which I certainly wouldn't argue in an academic
paper) as an objective or factual "thing" in and of itself (as opposed
to subjective changes in consciousness), I doubt if documenting THAT is
what any scholar would be trying to do.
Who is going to set themselves up for failure by trying to document the
internal, subjective affect of a ritual activity? People are going to
focus on what they can document: activities, schools of thought, texts,
teaching, group interaction (and probably much more).
The closest that I've seen is the attempt by someone to document
changes in brain activity by Tibetan monks but then these researchers
(nor the monks) are not stating that the monks are doing a magical act
affecting the rest of the world. They are simply looking at brain
effects caused by certain forms of meditation on the actor.
Al
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