Scholars and sceptics: who they are and what they do

Scholars and sceptics are the people who study magic from outside the practice: anthropologists, historians, folklorists, psychologists, scholars of religion and investigators who test claims. They have names such as E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Marcel Mauss, Bronislaw Malinowski, Mary Douglas, Keith Thomas and Carlo Ginzburg, and also investigators such as James Randi. This page covers what they have found, how they disagree, and what their work has cost and changed. Their work has changed how the whole subject is understood.

Early theories

Nineteenth-century writers such as James Frazer treated magic as a mistaken early science, a view now widely rejected as arrogant and inaccurate. Later anthropologists, including Evans-Pritchard in his 1937 study of the Azande, showed that magical belief can be a consistent way of reasoning about misfortune. Mauss and Malinowski stressed its social role. Fieldwork, archives, laboratory studies and surveys are their main methods, and each field has its own debates and schools.

The history of witch trials

Historians have revised their view of the witch trials. Keith Thomas and Alan Macfarlane studied English village accusations, Carlo Ginzburg found the benandanti in Friuli, and Ronald Hutton has argued about the numbers and causes, and Silvia Federici links the persecution to the rise of capitalism, a thesis historians dispute. The older figure of nine million victims has been dropped, and estimates now run to tens of thousands of executions.

Testing claims

Sceptics test whether claims hold up. James Randi offered a prize for evidence of paranormal power that was never won, and organisations such as the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry investigate fraud. Researchers study why people believe: pattern-seeking, uncertainty and the wish to control events. The best sceptics aim to understand people, not to mock them. Sceptics hold that claims should be tested, and they have a long record of exposing cases such as spirit photography and fake healers.

Ethics of study

Scholars were often colonial officials or missionaries, and their reports shaped how Indigenous religions were named. Contemporary researchers work with communities, ask consent and respect closed knowledge. Practitioners sometimes object to being explained, and sceptics sometimes to being called closed-minded. The conversation continues, and this guide aims to stay neutral on whether magic works. Their critics reply that science cannot measure everything that matters to a community, and that explaining a ritual away is not the same as understanding it.

Photo credits on this page

The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.

Spirit possession: Unknown author, CC BY 4.0, source

Jiangshi: Dick Thomas Johnson, CC BY 2.0, source

Lucifer: Gustave Doré, Public domain, source

Medieval European magic: Unknown author, Public domain, source

Molybdomancy: Micha L. Rieser, Attribution, source

Demon: Martin Schongauer, Public domain, source

Azazel: Louis Le Breton, Public domain, source

Curse of Ham: Ксенофонтов Иван Степанович. Ksenofóntov Iván Stepánovich (1817-1875), Public domain, source

Jannes and Jambres: Gerard Hoet, Public domain, source

Leviathan: Gustave Doré, Public domain, source

Divine retribution: John Martin, Public domain, source

Scholars and sceptics