Religion, magic and science
A long scholarly debate about whether magic, religion and science are separate kinds of thought or points on one line.
Also: the magic-religion debate, the Frazer-Malinowski debate, intellectualist and functionalist views
James Frazer, in The Golden Bough (1890), proposed a ladder: magic first, then religion, then science, each replacing the last. Bronislaw Malinowski, after fieldwork in the Trobriand Islands, argued that people use magic where outcomes are uncertain, such as deep-sea fishing, and use practical skill where they are not. Marcel Mauss and Henri Hubert treated magic as a social fact, shaped by group belief rather than individual error. E. E. Evans-Pritchard showed that Azande witchcraft belief explained misfortune in a logical way. Most anthropologists now doubt that the three can be cleanly separated, and many avoid the evolutionary ladder.