recently i finished a first read through Magic, Science, Religion and the Scope of Rationality by Stanley Tambiah. went over my head here and there, but overall read as a survey of how science, religion and rationality came out of magic or as a response to magic. it provided a look at how We started to busy ourselves with creating rationality.
i wonder if it’s possible to trace that point in human evolution when a group of humans decided they could create what is rational and what is not. in my mind, this permits the exercise of creating rationality when it comes to money. i’m curious about this being the point where we start to rationalize things like glamour magic, shamanism, or sleight of hand in this one specific area. and what’s more interesting to me is how all of this happens in a society that associates ‘magic’ with child’s play nonsense (irrationality).