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Transversal: International Journal for the Historiography of Science, 3 (2017) 03-25 
ISSN 2526-2270  
www.historiographyofscience.org  
© The Author 2017 – This is an open access article  
 
Article 
 
Magic vs. Science in the Historiography of Science:  
The Social-Historical Construction of Rationality 
 
Carlos Alvarez Maia1 
 
Abstract:  
The historiography of scientific studies has suffered from a great impact, that is rarely referred to, 
from anthropological analyses of magic in so-called primitive societies. The emphasis brought by 
criticism during the 1950/1960’s of Evans-Pritchard’s 1937 classic, Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic 
among the Azande, brought a fresh look at certainties already consolidated in Western thought, 
especially those relating to rational human characteristics and science. For the history, these 
criticisms were interesting because they were presented science as a historically situated activity, 
in the same way as magic. It favours, therefore, the proximity of historians tout court with the 
history of the sciences that resists its absences even today. This renewal helped to create a 
scenario that would enable David Bloor to develop the strong program of Sociology of 
Knowledge in the 1970s.  Such a program indicates the analogous process that involves both the 
social production of beliefs and that of scientific truths. The comparison between magic and 
science usually presents them in a hierarchy. As if there were an evolutionary process in which 
magical thinking necessarily preceded scientific thought. The one, more precarious, would belong 
to the prehistory of the scientific thought, which would be the climax of modern rational action. 
In this paper I evaluate the proximity of magic-science from the point of view of contemporary 
studies about scientific activity, questioning the concepts of rationality and logic as if they were 
exclusive qualities of scientific activity. A kind of metaphysical gift that would show the 
superiority of individuals over others, as much as of science over magic. I give special emphasis 
to the exposition of how rationality and logic are socio-historical characteristics acquired 
throughout history by human subjects in their experiential practices, and which are present both 
in magic and technical activities; these, an embryo of science. 
 
Keywords:  
Science and Magic; Rationality; Logic; Historiography of Science 
 
Received: 13 April 2017. Reviewed 15 August 2017. Accepted: 03 November 2017. 
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2017.i3.02 
_____________________________________________________________________________ 

 
 

There is no group of people, no matter how primitive, without 
religion or magic.  Just as there are not, by the way, any wild 
races that have no scientific attitude or science, though this 

                                                 
1 Carlos Alvarez Maia is a Professor of History in the Department of History at the State University of Rio de Janeiro 
– UERJ. Address: Rua São Francisco Xavier 524 – Maracanã, Rio de Janeiro – RJ, Brazil. CEP 20550-013. Email: 
alvarez@iis.com.br 
 



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fault is often imputed to them. In all primitive societies, 
studies by competent and trustworthy observers, detected 
two perfectly distinct domains, the Sacred and the Profane; in 
other words, the domain of Magic and Religion, and of 
Science. 

(Malinowski 1954, 17) 

 
 
A Simplified Orthodox Perception:  
What is the Difference between Magic and Science? 
 
This is a non-issue for classical historiography of the sciences. In this historiography, the 
distance between science and magic is evident, something trivial to be measured.  The 
distinction between them is flagrant. One is the most illustrious exponent of human 
rationality, while the other, in the penumbra of reason, shows the irrational in action. One is 
consistent with logic and walks straight along the paths of truth-seeking, the other follows a 
tortuous obscure pathway in which contradictions and inconsistencies become the rule. 
Along this path traced by magic, there is the absence of logical reasonableness, only 
unjustified credulity materially feeds deceptions and severe errors. In it, one does not know 
the truth, but it is believed that something, often improbable, is true. In magic, truth is given 
by either the oracle or by some magician, or in other words, given through subjective 
expectations in fantastic powers. The objective reality of nature, cultivated in science, 
receives the complement in magic, of another reality, which is the supernatural. In magic, 
what is supposed to be true appears complete and finished, as unlikely as it is. In science, the 
truth of facts stems from empirical research under the compass of reason, and must be 
proven in practical reality. The scientific propositions obey a logical correspondence with the 
events of the natural world. This natural world is the recipient of scientific investigations, yet 
already in magical perceptions, the world expands to the supernatural. In magic, what is 
beyond the apparent objective reality of nature, is that which is the reason for an empirical 
reality. There is an unquestionable magic and mystical truth guiding the natural facts. While 
in science everything can be questioned by new facts that prove the logical or empirical 
inconsistency of previous truths. In this way, science and magic are shown to be incompatible 
with each other. They direct two immiscible insights that seek answers and which tend to 
explain the world in two different ways. 

  
The Relation between Science and Magic: 
Impacts on Historiography 
 
In the late 1950s and the early 1960s, both the historiography of science, in particular, and 
that of human knowledge in general suffered a major shake-up. This is the setting for the 
appearance of Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in 1962. In these days it 
became common to reread the classic work of the anthropologist Evans-Pritchard’s 
Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande, from 1932. This re-reading involved authors 
of social sciences interested in the issue of knowledge, such as Michael Polanyi and Peter 
Winch.2 

The new emphasis stemming from the new analyses of Evans-Pritchard’s text, focused 
on highlighting the opinions of this author whose aim was to show how the Azande possess 

                                                 
2 It is, at the very least, a curiosity still little understood as the history tout court has remained distant from these 
events. That seems to confirm my thesis of the “history of sciences being an enterprise of absent historians” 
(Maia 2013). 



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a rational system of beliefs, besides investigating how this system manifests itself in social 
behaviour.3 Such a system of beliefs would allow the Azande to understand their collective 
life, their personal destinies, their successes and misfortunes. However, although Evans-
Pritchard perceived an internal coherence in such a system, he reports various 
inconsistencies in the explanatory forms of the Azande. Particularly in that who or what is 
defined as a witch, is the one capable of producing harm to others. Heredity would be the 
basic factor of this determination, however it would not within itself be the guarantee of 
witchcraft. One should consult the oracle to verify if such an individual is, or is not a witch. 
And even then, the result is not definitive. Determining the condition of witchcraft becomes 
an imbroglio that is difficult to solve, even generating some contradictions. 

Evans-Pritchard himself indicates situations in which deceptions and tricks of supposed 
wizards are used to deceive and thus escape their accusations. The explanatory haze used by 
the Azande prevents them from restraining themselves to the logical consequences of their 
definition of witchcraft as something organic and hereditary. There are several socially 
sanctioned forms that allow the accused to question his wizard status. Evans-Pritchard notes 
that such logical contradictions in the Azande belief system appear to be inherent in the 
system itself. And this fact – the logical contradictions – involves the Witchcraft, Oracles and 
Magic among the Azande text, and provides great interest to philosophers and social 
scientists. The discussion revolves around the kind of rationality that supplies a “primitive” 
society and the conditions of scientific knowledge. As can be seen from the text, the Azande 
have a technical knowledge that allows them to produce a society that provides a practice in 
the social life of its members that meets their material needs. Magic is a component of the 
social fabric that participates in all forms of life of the Azande, and favours the goals of its 
actions. The magic and technique developed in practical life are not in opposition. Both 
belong to that cultural form. 

Peter Winch was the reader of these issues that most impacted historiography when 
writing on the subject in the 1950s and 1960s. Although posterity considers it a fundamental 
landmark in the theoretical-methodological discussion for the social sciences, some criticisms 
have emerged regarding aspects of its intercultural analysis.4 For Winch, there is a harmony 
between the ways of thinking and acting in society. Thus, the Azande's understanding of the 
world and of life is derived from their ways of living, that is, the meanings extracted by the 
participants of a given culture are inherent in that culture. The Azande's understanding of 
the world is due to the way of life that sustains them. They are two inseparable things: the 
way they live and the sense that is drawn from this way of living. A particular action is not 
understood as something isolated, in itself, but only in the context that gives it meaning, in 
comparison with the other cultural manifestations. 

This proposal had already been stated in Winch’s previous essay (1967), The idea of a 
social science, of 1958. Later in his 1964 text, more specifically, understanding a primitive 
society, Winch (1994) details his propositions by bringing into focus his precise criticism of 
Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande. In referring to the analyses of the practices 
of a so-called primitive society, Winch declares: 

 

                                                 
3  “The Zande mentality is logical and inquisitive, within the premises of its own culture, and insists on the 
coherence of its own language” (Evans-Pritchard 2005, 47). 
4 See Robin Horton, “Professor Winch on safari”. in Horton 1993, 138-160. Horton summarizes the main criticisms 
received by Winch from various authors, (Horton 1993 406, n. 3) The title of Horton's article is an ironic indicator 
of his assessment by mentioning that Winch's work resembles a safari – the type of expedition in which nothing 
is learned with rigor about the place and its strange habits (Horton 1993, 409, n.65). For Horton, Winch – despite 
being a noted social science methodologist – has submitted to proposals of the counterculture that take it to a 
position of antipathy with the scientific activity. Horton says: “They (his writings) are a crusade, against the 
allegedly overweening claims of science, and in favor of all those modes of thought whose aims are 
incommensurable with those of science” (Horton 1993, 159). 



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when we speak of such practices as “superstitious”, “illusory”, “irrational”, we carry 
the weight of our culture behind us; and this is not just a matter of being on the fairer 
side, because these practices and beliefs belong and derive, in the sense they seem to 
have, from that same culture. (Winch 1994, 42) 

 

In 1958, Winch already clarified that: “ideas cannot thus be wrenched from their context; the 
relation between idea and context is an internal relation. It’s meaning stems from the role it 
plays in the system” (Winch 1967, 107). Or, six years later: “Meaning only becomes manifest 
in terms that are culturally related” (Winch 1994, 42).5  

In this way, each culture provides an intelligibility of the world, an intelligibility that is 
shared by the members of that culture. It would be a serious prejudice to suppose that our 
culture alone favours a certain understanding of life, of ourselves, and of the world. Quoting 
Collingwood, Winch defends that “some accounts of magical practices in primitive societies 
offered by ‘scientific’ anthropologists often mask ‘a half-conscious conspiracy to bring into 
ridicule and contempt civilizations different from our own’”  (Winch 1967, 103). 

Following this perception, we find no reason to be surprised at the assertion that each 
culture authorizes and formulates meanings for the world and that such meanings have no 
reason to be “lesser” or less suited to human life than ours. After all, the historical duty is 
such that societies and human groups follow each other by transmitting their cultural 
contours for the future. All societies before ours allowed human life to be realized and gave 
continuity to the human historical trajectory, independent of its “successes” or “mistakes”. 
In this sense, the so-called primitive societies were successful, they fulfilled with what is to 
come, and they favoured the formation of our history.6 

This understanding of society and the social sciences is supported by Winch in the later 
Wittgenstein manuscript, Philosophical Investigations. For this author, social relations are 
based on the act of “following a rule”. Human actions in society result from the sharing of 
rules that are followed collectively.7 Everything happens as if society were ordered in games 
with specific rules, built by itself, to be obeyed. Living in society is based on not breaking the 
rules of the game, although in a sense, breaking the rule is also a possibility and thus a kind 
of rule. Everyone must know how to play, that is, understand the meanings and dispositions 
of the norms that define the social game. Wittgenstein uses the term “language games” that 
guide and condition “forms of life”. It is in the use of language that the socialization of 
individuals is promoted while providing the routine meanings for its users. Wittgenstein’s 
pragmatic perspective of valuing effective practical activity is reinforced by Winch, and 
removes any rancid intellectualist or even rationalist from the analysis of the social sciences. 

Winch's view observes the Azande society as a form of life in which the magic of the 
oracle is a part, as well as the development of the techniques that guarantee the collective 
subsistence. There is no disharmony, as they are integrated into the practice of social life. 
And this form of life of the Azande formulates the meanings that are intrinsic to them, they 
integrate their language games. Perhaps Winch's most compelling assertion to be based on 
Wittgenstein is: “It is not reality that gives meaning to language. The real and the unreal are 
shown in the sense that language has” (Winch 1994, 37). 

                                                 
5  “It is only with reference to the criteria that govern this system of ideas or way of life that they have any 
existence as social or intellectual events” (Winch 1967, 108). 
6 It is here that the anthropological warning comes before the conflict between “we” and “them”. Any moral or 
cognitive hierarchy that shows “our” superiority to “their” culture can cause comprehensive misunderstandings. 
We cannot demand that a society, called “primitive” or not, fulfill our values, ethical or epistemic. 
7 Only by the “use” – collective – of the language is it possible to share meaningful behaviour. Thus, to understand 
“is grasping the point or meaning of what is being or said” (Winch 1967, 115). Thus, “all meaningful behavior must 
be social, since it can be meaningful only if governed by rules, and rules presuppose a social setting” (Winch 1967, 
116). 



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Language here is totally removed from the mentalism that perceives it as the 
representational agent of the world. It is not the mere representation nor a description, but 
a constructive agent of the world, a material agent. It is not the world that gives legitimacy 
to language by “confirming” its idealized representations, but it is the “use of language” in 
their games that provides meaning for the world and for human life.8 

Something remarkable that had unfolded in the historiography of the subsequent 
years was Winch's understanding, which indicated that language moved all the actions in the 
life of the Azande, and they are oriented to the mystical or practical activities. There is no 
distinction between them, and the meaning given by language directed any and all social 
enterprise. Language forged reality.9 By emphasizing Evans-Pritchard's words, Winch values 
this process of constructing meanings irrespective of their destiny, be it magical or technical: 

 
their mystical notions are eminently coherent, they are interrelated by a network of 
logical nexuses, and are arranged in such a way that they never overly contradict the 
sensory experience without, on the contrary, that experience which seems to justify 
them. (Evans-Pritchard, quoted in Winch 1994, 49) 

 

What can be deduced from Winch's analysis is that all significant action, from the most banal 
and routine in the life of the Azande, to the most striking and influential in the collective, are 
actions socially conducted by their symbolic and sensory apparatus. They are reactions of 
form of life to situations that require the interpretive understanding – before its local and 
historical possibilities – in the scenario where meanings are able to be apprehended. 

 
a primitive system of magic, like that of the Azande, constitutes a universe of coherent 
discourse as much as that of science, on the basis of which one can discern an 
intelligible conception of reality, and clear ways of deciding which beliefs agree or 
disagree with this reality. (Winch 1994, 39) 

 

By this orientation, Winch conflicts with the tradition already established in the studies of 
science that separates scientific activity from other human activities, such as the arts or 
magic-mystical thought. In this tradition, science is supposed to be the most complete 
expression of the use of reason to face natural reality. This, our scientific and philosophical 
heritage, has left us with the understanding that concepts such as “reality”, “rationality” and 
“truth” have an affinity with each other and guide the posture of scientists before the 
challenge of understanding and explaining the world. These three parameters go hand in 
hand in a single protocol: scientists seek the truth about the systems that regulate the 
functioning of the world (reality) by subjecting this connection (between truth and reality) to 
rigorous, so-called, rational criteria. 

Thus, a rigid demarcation was constructed between the ways of examining scientific 
work. It would be fitting to examine the epistemology of the scientific achievements: the 
true value of the theories and the adequacy of concepts linked to scientific experiments and 
facts. Already the circumstantial drama that involves scientific advances and challenges, with 
their difficulties, errors and correctness, belong to the historical and factual chronicle that 
                                                 
8 Winch (1994, 90) criticizes Roger Trig who thinks of language as a description of reality. For Winch, language is 
not about “describing nothing at all”. “If we really want to speak of a 'relationship between language and reality', 
this is not a relation between a set of descriptions and what is described”.  Language, as a constructive agent of 
reality, connects with the world through the “trace” of Derrida, see Maia 2015, 118 ff, 134-137. 
9 This understanding generates the hypothesis of symbolic-material agency for the language, see Maia, 2015.  
Since its prehistoric formation, language is more than a mere articulation between signs, or a mental 
representation of the world. It is constituted by any and all meaning: the more-than-literal language, which 
becomes the central agent of human activities. 



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portrays the events related to the research. On the one hand is epistemology, examining the 
truth of the contents of science, on the other, is history describing the socio-cultural form of 
the scientific endeavour. The social sciences, history, and sociology would only be able to 
keep up with failures, mistakes, and misunderstandings, whereas epistemology should 
understand when and how the efforts of scientists were successful. 

Winch brought to the scope of sociology of knowledge both the analysis of correctness 
and its misunderstandings. Both the so-called “misconceptions” and the so-called “truths” 
would be social productions. Both were due to language games that fuelled social relations, 
putting an end to the times of the “sociology of error” that still prevailed in the days of Winch 
and Kuhn. In this way, both truth and error should undergo sociological analysis,10 after all, 
Winch did not confer a distinct sociological statute for the magical conceptions 
differentiating them by techniques, said, rational or scientific. 

 
Undoubtedly, the nature of the Azande life is such that it is of great importance that 
its crops are good. And it is also clear that they adopt all kinds of practical measures, 
one could call 'technological', within their capabilities, to ensure that the crops are 
effectively good. However, this is no reason to view their magical rituals as an 
additional erroneous measure. (Winch 1994, 73) 

 

It deserves particular attention to follow historically how the technical foundation of this 
demarcation between the epistemological and the sociological took place. 
 

The Bipolar Understanding of Scientific Activity in Historiography 

 
We received from the 18th century a strong scientific heritage fuelled by the ideology of 
Enlightenment. This scientism chose scientific activity as the Edenic solution to human 
becoming. Science thus served as proof that the use of rationality by homo sapiens was the 
best strategy for societal development. Reason guaranteed and engendered material 
advancement and, perhaps, good fortune and generalized well-being. 

This realization favoured the understanding that science was a production driven by its 
own logic. There was talk of a method that would put a positive gaze on the world and its 
phenomena. It would be the empirical commanded by reason. Evidently, the myth of human 
progress in rhythm and under the chords of scientific rationality still survived forcefully. This 
context favours the imperialist pretension of epistemology and made it unthinkable that 
scientific knowledge could have some debt with social injunctions: science should be a 
neutral and objective knowledge, without the marks of the society that produced it, its 
religiosity or any other political or ideological premise. Thus, in the actual practice of scholars 
of science, a reasonably tacit agreement exists: the division of powers between 
epistemology and history or sociology. 

The first and most important challenge to this understanding was given by Karl 
Mannheim, from 1923.11 Mannheim pointed out how social factors actively participated in the 

                                                 
10 It is recalled that the sociological tradition demarcated the space of action of the sociology of knowledge for 
the analysis of errors, since the analysis of the truth should be of strictly epistemic ambit. It was thought that the 
errors were due to the societal action, and the correct ones belonged to the rational scope of the epistemology. 
See Maia 2015, 61, note 28. 
11  “Among the published material during his life, three inaugural articles articulate among themselves in an 
operatic crescendo: “On the Interpretation of the Weltanschauung” (1923), “Historicism” (1924), and “The 
Problem of Sociology of Knowledge” (1925).” (Maia 2013, 93) In this evolution, Mannheim shifts his explanatory 
base from the Weltanschauung to the concepts that will establish his sociology of knowledge culminating with 
Ideology and Utopia in Bonn, 1929. To assume a sociology to deal with knowledge was a direct affront to radical 



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production of knowledge through the “style of thought”, Denkstil, whose matrix was 
strongly historical-sociological. “Style” would be the individual-collective way of thinking and 
formed the grammatical basis from which, and on which, rationality would emit its 
arguments. The logical structure of reasoning would start from some premises and findings 
constituted by the “style of thought” of that collective. “Style” provides the conceptual 
framework that allows rationality – whatever it is – to draw its inferences (Maia 2012; 2013, 
94-95). 

Mannheim's goal was to “escape the static character of substantialist metaphysics 
(which encapsulates the natural sciences) and nest in a dynamic ontology that exposes the 
world of history in its procedural becoming” (Maia: 2013, 93). 

But for all his propositions critical of scientistic metaphysics, Mannheim gives a 
differentiated value to the sciences of nature. However, he is insistent against static and 
absolutized, a-historical understandings, which disregard historical evidence in favour of a 
relational and dynamic understanding to evolve events. Several times Mannheim speaks 
generically about knowledge being existentially determined, seeming to encompass all 
forms of cognition, however there are specific statements to say that this is not the case.12  
Mannheim excludes the exact natural sciences and the mathematics of this conditioning or 
social determination, naming them as of the type “2X2=4”.  

Immediately after the German edition of Ideology and Utopia in 1929, a broad debate 
ensued in the sociological circles: Der Streit um die Wissenssoziologie (the dispute of the 
sociology of knowledge). This dispute, preceded and accompanied by the strong opposition 
of the Wiener Kreis neo-positivists, the Vienna Circle, to the Wissenssoziologie, involved more 
than 30 articles in response to Mannheim covering a wide range of theoretical positions 
(Maia 2013, 96-97). In August of 1929 the neo-positivist manifesto was launched, subscribed 
by Hans Hahn, Otto Neurath and Rudolf Carnap (Maia 2013, 103). However, the most efficient 
formulation of this group would be Der logishe Aufbau der Welt, (The Logical Structure of the 
World), by Rudolf Carnap, edited in Berlin, in 1928 (Maia 2013, 105). 

Carnap understands that scientific activity can be observed from two different angles. 
It supposes the partition between the “rational reconstruction” of theories and concepts, 
and the historical description of events. Thus, it seeks to separate questions of validity, that 
are rationally justified, and questions regarding the origin of ideas of psychosocial motivation, 
which tend to be overlapped and confused (Maia 2013, 106-107). 

This rupture between epistemology and history is further accentuated by 
Reichenbach’s dichotomy for the analysis of science: “I shall introduce the terms context of 
discovery and context of justification to mark this distinction [...] between the thinker’s way 
of finding his theorem and his way of presenting is before a public” (Reichenbach quoted in 
Maia 2013, 109). This division of contexts became quite influential in the destinies of 
historiography until the 1980s. In a way, it was fatal to the development of a sociology of 
knowledge. History and sociology were banished to the context of the discovery that 
described the genetic processes by which a scientific event occurred. Already the validity of 
knowledge was restricted to its rational justification and belonged to epistemology. It was 
said that knowing the origin of a particular piece of knowledge, does not imply its validity. 

                                                 
rationalist premises that demarcated the exclusivity of the field of epistemology, without considering the 
historicity of the concepts involved (Maia 2012; 2013). 
12 In the article “Historismus”, 1924, Mannheim already mentions: “the exact sciences can make statements in the 
matter of that which does not enter the historical and local position of the knowing subject”. In Ideology and 
Utopia, Mannheim deals with similar issues: “It is true, as to this type of knowledge, [referred to as the type 2 x 2 
= 4] that its genesis does not interfere with the results of thought” (Maia 2012, 57, note 13). In Mannheim's own 
words: “a modern theory of knowledge that considers the relational character (...) must start from the suspicion 
that there are spheres of thought in which it is impossible to conceive an absolute truth, independent of the 
subject's values and position, and without relation to the social context. Not even a god could formulate a 
proposition on historical questions similar to 2X2 = 4.” (Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, quoted in Maia 2012, 56) 



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In short, Mannheim’s sociological initiative was abandoned. His sociology of 
knowledge was replaced by Merton's sociology of science, moving in a direction quite 
different from that of Mannheim (Maia 2013, 202). In Merton we proceeded to analyse the 
institutional character of science, its norms and collective routines of work, and not to 
venture to evaluate conceptual contents. The territory in dispute between the epistemology 
and the sociology was pacified, the territories themselves were demarcated. Henceforth, the 
social sciences only have historical descriptions of the origins of knowledge, the context of 
discovery, or the “sociology of error” – when scientific inquiry fails. Besides these 
alternatives, the institutional and corporate analysis carried out by the Mertonian sociology 
still remains. It never goes into the context of justification, in a “sociology of truth” that 
belongs exclusively to epistemology. Only with The Structure of Scientific Revolution of Kuhn, 
1962, will we have the first scratches on this partition and also, of course, with Winch pointing 
out an “Achilles heel” at the epistemological pretensions. 

 

The next Step: Bloor, the Symmetry and Relativism of Reason 
 
Winch did not consider the premises of epistemology that preached the hierarchy of 
rationalistic values for objects that could, or could not be analysed by sociology. And this will 
be the innovative historiographical accomplishment made by Barry Barnes and David Bloor's 
insight in proposing the strong program of the sociology of knowledge. 

Bloor, in Knowledge and Social Imagery, 1976, presents a new and revolutionary 
orientation contained in his “principle of symmetry” in which errors and epistemological 
correctness deserve the same sociological treatment. There is no distinction between truth 
and falsity from the point of view of sociology. Both are social productions (Bloor 1991, 7; 
Maia: 2015, 61). And so, once again, the Enlightenment rationalism that fed the understanding 
of science, suffered an intense setback. 

Winch provided Bloor with the basis of his relativism by valuing social action as a 
meaningful action to “follow a rule”. Restricting itself to the “use of language”, the user 
acquires the understanding of the meaning of what he is following, and thus participates in 
the societal game. Reality is constituted as part of that game. Different societies would 
present alternatives to various social games. 

This perception of games already has serious relativistic consequences. In his analogy 
with sports games, Winch compares the comprehensive conflict between two different 
cultures – one analysing the other, in this case the Europeans and the Azande – as if they 
were two sports modalities. The rules of a game are not contradictory to each other. Each 
game is consistent in itself. There is no one “correct” game, nor one “incorrect”.13 

With this, Winch responds to critics of the Azande's social logic, including Evans-
Pritchard himself, that the Azande commit contradictions in their beliefs and customs. Which, 
when compared to ours, the Azande culture would have traces of irrationality (Winch 1994, 
48-49, 53-54, 56, 63, 98). Would the Azande have “other” logic as the foundation of their 
reasoning? 

And from there, Bloor goes on. He suggests that logic itself with its “laws” and rules 
of inference may be subject to relativism by letting himself be led by Wittgenstein's 
argument: “Let us therefore consider a society with very different laws from ours and see if 
its members are indeed persuaded to reason differently” (Bloor 1991, 138). 

It is through Winch that Bloor advances even more: “there must be more than one 
logical process: Azande logic and Western logic” (Bloor 1991, 139). This issue is resolved by 
Bloor in the context of the concept of “negotiation”, which is necessary when a logical 
                                                 
13 Winch compares the game of cricket with baseball to indicate that there is no contradiction between them and 
their rules. This serves to soften the criticism that the Azande received for showing logical contradictions in their 
culture, evidently detected when analyzed by Europeans (Winch 1994, 98-99).  



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contradiction emerges in some dispute. “Negotiation” is a key concept in Bloor (1991, 146-
156) to resolve conflicts and occupy wide analytical space in the “strong program”. Bloor 
himself presents what would be a contradiction in our society that punishes the murder of a 
person, but to safeguard the bombings and damages of war. After all, is killing a crime? Is 
there a logical contradiction between the two attitudes? Negotiated interpretive arguments 
solve the contradiction (Bloor 1991, 142-143). 

The idea of a logical relativism, as it could be interpreted in its most radical form in 
Bloor, does not flourish serenely. It is a controversial thesis as opposed to its “symmetry”, 
which has acquired reasonable consensus. 

However, these considerations of Winch and Bloor continue the uneasiness of thought. 
They oppose an absolutist and a-historical perception of human nature. In this understanding 
of things – with timeless validity – there seems to be a substance, perhaps even organic, that 
would produce the humanity of man: reason. And this would be a classical precondition for 
the emergence of scientific thought. 

 

What Would the Rationality Be from the Point of View of History? 
 
My main goal is to understand what generates the rules of logic that characterize the 
reasoning considered correct in each society. How is the human ability of logical inference 
possible? Is it innate or acquired? Do logical structures vary in each culture, as Bloor 
suggested? Or would they be more universal, but dependent on the historical learning of the 
human collective living in nature? 

I will attach Bronislaw Malinowski to my network of support authors. His book: Magic, 
science and religion, remains on the path to further investigation, despite its longevity.14 

There are indications that there are several procedures by which a compelling 
conclusion that is generalized can be obtained. As is the case with the metonymic use that 
appease human discomfort with the feeling of death. The cyclical succession of climatic 
seasons seems to induce a metonymy for human “eternal” life. It is suggested that after the 
decline of winter, life returns in spring with a new vitality. It seems reasonable to me that this 
primal perception is used as a “proof” of a mystical existence in the eternity of the human 
soul. This would be the “vitalist hypothesis” of the origin of religion.15 The existence of the 
soul or of an immaterial spirit also seems to be displaced from the fact that deceased persons 
“appear” in dreams. It would be the revelation of the active presence of the spirit of the 
dead.16 

There is thus a transference of meaning from something of the natural world to serve 
as the mystical understanding of human nature. The meaning of, and for, human life are 
elaborations developed from the contact with the environment, in routine experiences. 
Precisely through this structure that involves and is commanded by the meanings taken from 

                                                 
14 The actuality of Malinowski's work is remarkable, being valued by such contemporary expert authors as Keith 
Thomas, when analyzing magic and religion. “However unfashionable Malinowski's theories are today, they have 
been one of the few direct attacks against the difficult question of why magical beliefs decline.” (Thomas 1991, 
527) See also: the historiographical work of Tambiah (1990) on magic, religion and science. 
15 “for the primitive man death has meaning mainly as a step to resurrection, decay as a stage of rebirth, the 
plenty of autumn and the decline of winter as preludes to the revival of spring”. [...] “faith and cult spring 
from the crises of human existence, ‘the great events of life, birth, adolescence, marriage, death [...] it is 
about these events that religions largely focuses’” (Malinowski 1954, 22).  
16 “the savage philosopher or theologian was led to distinguish the human soul from the body. Now the 
soul obviously continues to lead an existence after death, for it appears in dreams, haunts the survivors 
in memories and in visions and apparently influences human destinies. Thus, originated the belief in 
ghosts and the spirits of the dead, in immortality and in a nether world. But man, in general, and primitive 
man in particular, has a tendency to imagine the outer world in his own image. And since animals, plants, 
and objects move, act, behave, help man or hinder him, they must also be endowed with souls or spirits”  
(Malinowski 1954, 18). 



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the world, is that we will have the invention of language. It is a language conceived as one 
that establish meaning –  language as something more than literal –, in opposition to 
language as a mere producer and transmitter of signs (Maia 2015). 

The reasonableness of this argument lies in its empirical aspect. The productive ways 
of thinking as the result of a practical activity in the world. Thought is not created from 
nothingness. It stems from the possibilities that life offers. Souls and spirits, beliefs in eternal 
life and the other mystical elements that fuel religions are born of existential conflicts, and 
the consciousness of death is the most potent of these feelings. They are born of these 
conflicts and present calming solutions extracted from the practice of life. I find nothing 
illogical in these conclusive procedures. On the contrary, they are insightful. Metaphors and 
metonymy are indicators of abstract and rational reasoning. Or, after all, what is rationality? 
A mana served by the gods? Does the concept of causality stem from an element of the 
genetic code? Or is it the result of an understanding of the functioning of the world that 
allows human survival in nature, and before its existential fragilities? 

I am referring this article to a hypothesis centred on human material and social 
coexistence. It is in the human interaction with its environment, an interaction that has 
always occurred in a collective and in cooperation, that advances in the understanding of the 
world and its things. It advances in interactive learning and shared solutions that are 
discovered/invented and socially transmitted. In other words, it is in historical experience 
that this human gift of “right reasoning” is perceived and shared. Proper reasoning in the 
struggle for survival is a quality guaranteed by reciprocal interaction in the world. I am 
excluding a special gift given by some substance, organic or magical, called “reason”.17 “That 
criteria of logic are not a direct gift of God, but arise out of, and are only intelligible in the 
context of, ways of living or modes of social life” (Winch 1967, 100). 

Winch had already opposed the “rationalistic” concept of the nature of human 
intelligence and rationality. 

 
According to this misconception the rationality of human behaviour comes to it from 
without: from intellectual functions which operate according to laws of their own and 
are, in principle, quite independent of the particular forms of activity to which they may 
nevertheless be applied. (Winch 1967, 54) 

 
The existence and use of human “rational quality” are not independent of the activities 
carried out: “a cook is not a man who first has a vision of a pie and then tries to make it; he is 
a man skilled in cookery, and both his projects and his achievements spring from that skill.” 
(Winch 1967, 55) Rationality is not a gift that appears ready and finished. It is built slowly 
through human interactions with each other, and with their environment. Every decision 
taken by the “primitive” before a practical problem was solved, was a step towards the 
construction of his rationality. 

So, after all, what is causal reason? How do humans learn it? How do you get to the 
rules of logic? What criteria define something as rational? Were primitive populations in a pre-
logical phase? Immersed in irrational superstition? 

Malinowski, in discussing what would be the “rational mastery by man of his 
surroundings” (Malinowski 1954, 25-36) weaves considerations based on his rich field work, 
and generalizations that prove useful for our understanding of what is poorly understood in 
primitive populations. According to him, it was Lévy-Bruhl who was responsible for 
generating several myths that characterized such a “pre-logical stage” of primitive humans, 
plunged into seemingly meaningless superstitions (Malinowski, 1954, 25). He reveals how so-
called “pre-logical” societies captured in their daily readings the suitable ways of interacting 

                                                 
17 The “human intelligence was much overrated as a real influence on social events” (Winch 1967, 105). 



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with their environment, and guaranteed collective survival. It is evident that for this, some 
kind of intellection is necessary. Speaking of his personal experience with the people of New 
Guinea, he comments: “These natives [...] are expert fishermen, industrious manufactures 
and traders, but they rely mainly on gardening for their subsistence” (Malinowski, 1954, 
27). With rudimentary tools, they can produce enough crops to maintain the dense 
population, and still store surpluses. “The success in their agriculture depends – besides 
the excellent natural conditions with which they are favored – upon their extensive 
knowledge of the classes of the soil, of the various cultivated plants” (Malinowski, 1954, 
27). Certainly this routine task can only be achieved with a proper understanding of the 
environment in which they live, and a knowledge extracted from their interaction with 
the world. They acquire a knowledge for which I see no other evidence than that of a 
rationality.18 

Alongside practical reasoning, the native is also subject to magical thinking, “if the 
fences are broken down, if the seed is destroyed or has been dried or washed away, he 
will have recourse not to magic, but to work, guided by knowledge and reason” 
(Malinowski 1954, 28). They separate well what is of the technical area, and what is of 
magic. 19  If in one year the harvest is bad, but in the same material conditions of the 
previous year that was excellent, the appeal to magic is made. There is no such lack of 
rationality as suggested by Lévy-Bruhl’s stereotype of “pre-logic”, the natives know these 
two functions: magic and technique, very well (Malinowski, 1954, 29). These functions are 
never confused. Thus, in the construction of canoes, “empirical knowledge of material, of 
technology, and of certain principles of stability and hydrodynamics, function in company 
and close association with magic, each yet uncontaminated by the other” (Malinowski, 
1954, 30).20 

However, in moments of real danger during navigation, magic is again used in a 
situation absolutely analogous to any fisherman of the present day (Malinowski 1954, 30). 
The same alternation occurs when fishing is carried out in the calm of the lagoons, where 
confidence in practical knowledge prevails. In the opposite case, when fishing is on the 
open sea and being subject to imponderable factors, including by the appearance of 
shoals and storms, it is in this case that magic is triggered (Malinowski 1954, 31). 

 
He knows that a plant cannot grow by magic alone, or a canoe sail or float without 
being properly constructed and managed, or a fight be won without skill and 
daring. He never relies on magic alone, while, on the contrary, he sometimes 
dispenses with is completely, as in fire-making and in a number of crafts and 

                                                 
18 “They have to select the soil and the seedlings, they have appropriately to fix the times for clearing and 
burning the scrub, for planting and weeding, for training the vines of the yam plants. In all this they are 
guided by a clear knowledge of weather and seasons, plants and pests, soil and tubers, and by a conviction 
that this is true and reliable, that it can be counted upon and must be scrupulously obeyed” (Malinowski 
1954, 27-28). 
19 Keith Thomas also values this aspect detected by Malinowski, citing him in that magic “must be expected and 
generally found whenever man reaches an insurmountable gap, a gap in his knowledge or in his powers of 
practical control”. Thomas continues: “As an alternative to impotence without solution, the savage resorts to the 
substitutive activity of magical ritual, such as when vegetables are carefully planted and watered, but also 
encouraged by the recitation of spells” (Thomas 1991, 527). 
20 “For example, they understand perfectly well that the wider the span of the outrigger the greater the 
stability yet the smaller the resistance against strain. They can clearly explain why they have to give this 
span a certain traditional width, measured in fraction of the length of the dugout. They can also explain, in 
rudimentary but clearly mechanical terms, how they have to behave in a sudden gale, why the outrigger 
must be always on the weather side, why the one type of canoe can and the other cannot beat. They have, 
in fact, a whole system of principles of sailing, embodied in a complex and rich terminology, traditionally 
handed on and obeyed as rationally and consistently as is modern science by modern sailors. How could 
they sail otherwise under dangerous conditions in their frail primitive craft?” (Malinowski 1954, 30) 



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pursuit. But he clings to it, whenever he has to recognize the impotence of his 
knowledge and of his rational technique. (Malinowski 1954, 32)  

 
The native has to know how. And this only occurs with the numerous attempts to solve the 
problems of their survival. Each learning, whether in fishing, or in plantations and crops, forge 
a logic of interaction with the environment. I repeat, logic is not a gift, it is an achievement 
that comes from successful interactions. Logic comes with learning. How to navigate, how 
to grow food, how to prune, how to make fire, how to cook some food, and how not to cook 
others, how to produce utensils and tools, how to produce pottery: all this stems from long 
attempts to understand the correct and simple way to achieve the goals. And the most 
important: to know how to distinguish between magic and technique. 

The misconceptions that classical anthropology bequeathed us, as in the case of Lévy-
Bruhl, served to mask the evidence of the use of rationality that was in the process of being 
constructed. It is not innate, it stems from a long historical process of human culture. Once 
again, we are faced with the danger of the hierarchy of “we” and “them”, who saw the 
savage delivered to superstitions and magic, in a “pre-logical” state. A particular “form of life” 
has an intrinsic logic that can only be evaluated and perceived from within said form of life. 
It is not possible to accurately assess an element of a cultural system from outside the system 
to which that element belongs. The analysis, to be comprehensive, must use the concepts 
and instruments of that culture. This is Malinowski's achievement. 

With the Enlightenment came the certainty of our differential grandeur. We look at the 
primitive as if it were an “other”. But rationality is not an exclusive attribute of modern 
science. Nor did logic begin with Aristotle. With his Organon he began, yes, the study of 
logic.21 But are the rules of logic, of “good” reasoning, correct and efficient to interact with 
the world, no longer being tested and learned for millennia? 

But the most forceful identification of the active human rational action is the one that 
allowed the conquest of its symbolic condition. Man has become a symbolic animal since 
archaic ages. His actions did not occur only in the physical or material register by sensory 
motivations. He also acted, moved by the sense he extracted from the world, sharing the 
meanings. He has become a symbolic-material agent since the Palaeolithic era for at least 
thirty thousand years. Alongside concrete and specific material tools, the human adventure 
provided the most remarkable tool that gave power for achievements, and took him to 
places unimaginable even for the Neolithic: language. After all, today, a terrestrial probe has 
already reached Jupiter. 

I already dealt with this in another article (Maia 2015, 111-118), but here I simply follow 
the indication of an explanatory gap made by Malinowski.22 I have examined the hypothesis 

                                                 
21 Curiously, it was not only the idea of logic that was not created by Aristotle, the very term “logic” was yet to be 
invented. After all, logic is a historical production. It was up to Aristotle to make the first treatise on the subject. 
“In Organon, the substantive logic is absent. The use of rational deduction is analytic, best expressed in the verbal 
form used by Aristotle, the epistemic. Substantive logic noun is an adjectival form that refers to the symbolism 
itself, the logical discourse, but it is a late form, due more to the Alexandrian and Roman eclecticism than to the 
teaching of magisterium.” (Gomes 1985, 10) 
22 “I have chosen to face the question of primitive man’s rational knowledge directly: watching him at is 
principal occupations, seeing him pass from work to magic and back again, entering into his mind, listening 
to his opinions. The whole problem might have been approached through the avenue of language, but this 
would have led us too far into questions of logic, semasiology, and theory of primitive languages. Words 
which serve to express general ideas such as existence, substance, and attribute, cause and effect, the 
fundamental and the secondary; words and expressions used in complicate pursuits like sailing, 
construction, measuring and checking; numerals and quantitative descriptions, correct and detailed 
classifications of natural phenomena, plants and animals – all this would lead us exactly to the same 
conclusion: that primitive man can observe and think, and that he possesses, embodied in his language, 
systems of methodological though rudimentary knowledge” […] “Similar conclusions could be drawn from 
an examination of those mental schemes and physical contrivances which could be described as diagrams or 



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of the synchronic constitution of language and technique developed by the anthropologists 
Vitor Bunak (Russian) and Leroi-Gourhan (French) who lead us to understand the 
simultaneous production of language, and the use of instrumental techniques. “The man 
makes concrete utensils and symbols, both of them resulting from the same process” (Maia 
2015, 115). 

For the development of human reason, it was fundamental that the advent of language 
would be allowed to organize and objectify reasoning. With language, the logical use of 
descriptions and arguments is allowed. What would logic, even prehistoric, be without 
language? How does one explain a causal relationship without language? These questions 
themselves bring about something remarkable: that it is the fact that language was invented 
by ILLITERATE human beings. 

Language as the material agency of collective interaction in the world, with the world, 
and not as mere communication between humans. It is thus authorized to share knowledge, 
and then reproduce itself for the next generation. History is given more dynamism. Illusion 
finds that history only begins with writing. Before writing we lived as historical beings for 
millennia. Language, although without writing, allowed the development of these three 
areas of the human avatar: magic, technical knowledge, and religion. This trio has always 
accompanied our historical evolution. Despite recent incredible technical and scientific 
advances, we still see symbolic forces such as the “evil eye”, “bad luck”, “big eye”, “miracle 
cures”, and “spells that bring a loved one”. This is besides religious cults that have multiplied 
infinitely. If, today, religion and science have become formal institutions, the territory of 
magic persists in informality, even if active. There does not seem to be an opposition 
between science, magic and religion so antagonistic and destructive as this. 

But in its origin, in pre-history, how did the differentiation between these three 
symbolic components of society take place? I’ll let Malinowski reveal this to us. 

In magic, “early man seeks above all to control the course of nature for practical 
ends”. When he realizes “the limitations of his magical might”, it is then that he appeals 
to higher beings or gods (Malinowski 1954, 19). Roughly, we can say that on the one hand we 
have practical observations in science, and on the other we have the desire for power to feed 
the spell. 23  The border between magic and religion already has some points of contact.  
“Both magic and religion arise and function in situations of emotional stress: crises of 
life, lacunae in important pursuits, death and initiation into tribal mysteries, unhappy 
love and unsatisfied hate” (Malinowski 1954, 87). Magic is “based on man’s confidence 
that he can dominate nature directly, if only he knows the laws which govern it magically, is 
in this akin to science” (Malinowski 1954, 19). Religion, however, comes into play in the 
failure of magic by recognizing that human desire is powerless to achieve all goals. 

                                                 
formulas. Methods of indicating the main points of the compass, arrangements of stars into constellations, 
co-ordination of these with the seasons, naming of the moons in the year, of quarters in the moon – all these 
accomplishments are known to the simplest savages. Also, they are all able to draw diagrammatic maps in 
the sand or dust, indicate arrangements by placing small stones, shells, or sticks on the ground, plan 
expeditions or raids on such rudimentary charts. By coordinating space and time they are able to arrange big 
tribal gatherings and to combine vast tribal movements over extensive areas.” (Ma lino wski 1954,  3 3)  
23 “Science, even as represented by the primitive knowledge of savage man, is based on the normal universal 
experience of everyday life, experience won in man’s struggle with nature for his subsistence and safety, 
founded on observation, fixed by reason. Magic is based on specific experience of emotional states in which 
man observes not nature but him himself, in which the truth is revealed not by reason but by the play of 
emotions upon the human organism. Science is founded on the conviction that experience, effort, and 
reason are valid; magic on the belief that hope cannot fail nor desire deceive. The theories of knowledge 
are dictated by logic, those of magic by the association of ideas under the influence of desire. As a matter 
of empirical fact, the body of rational knowledge and the body of magical lore are incorporated each in a 
different tradition, in a different social setting and a different type of activity, and all these differences are 
clearly recognized by the savages. The one constitutes the domain of the profane; the other, hedged round 
by observances, mysteries, and taboos, makes up half to the domain of the sacred.” (Malinowski 1954, 87) 



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Early man seeks above all to control the course of nature for practical ends, and he 
does it directly, by rite and spell, compelling wind and weather, animals and crops 
to obey his will. Only much later, finding the limitation of his magical might, does 
he in fear or hope, in supplication or defiance, appeal to higher beings; that is, to 
demons, ancestor-spirits or gods. (Malinowski 1954, 19) 

 
Magic, as an attempt to solve the aspirations of unsatisfied desires, is thus a result of 
personal frustration that needs to be compensated. Overcoming this dissatisfaction 
favours belief in a supernatural power of men over other men, and over the world. In 
its failure of omnipotence, in the realization that the supposed magician is impotent, it 
is then that religion begins to act. Religion becomes the preferred mystical channel to 
go beyond human material boundaries. Among all human frailties, the consciousness of 
death is the principal motive of religious demands, driven by the hope of reaching an 
eternal life, perhaps paradisiacal. 

Lévi-Strauss complements these perceptions: “religion consists in a humanization 
of natural laws and magic in a naturalization of human actions”. In this way, he defines 
religion as the “anthropomorphism of nature” and magic as the “physiomorphism of 
man”.24 

I leave with Malinowski his last words in his great little book: 
 

The function of magic is to ritualize man’s optimism, to enhance his faith in the victory 
of hope over fear. Magic express the greater value for man of confidence over doubt, 
of steadfastness over vacillation, of optimism over pessimism. Looking from far and 
above, from our high places of safety in developed civilization, it is easy to see all the 
crudity and irrelevance of Magic. But without its power and guidance early man could 
not have mastered his practical difficulties as he has done, nor could man have 
advanced to the higher stages of culture. Hence the universal occurrence of magic in 
primitive societies and its enormous impact. Hence do we find magic an invariable 
adjunct of all important activities. I think we must see in it the embodiment of the 
sublime folly of hope, which has yet been the best school of man’s character. 
(Malinowski 1954, 90) 

 
This historical condition, as pointed out by Malinowski, in referring to magic as a 
supportive occurrence, is perhaps necessary for further human development toward 
other civilizational milestones that can be extended to religion, and, more evidently, to 
technique. These three corporate functions have several elements in common. 
Separating them by the indicator of rationality-irrationality is a historical misconception 
that has been endorsed even by renowned anthropologists. To suppose the primitive 
populations are immersed in superstitions, incapacitated in a pre-logical state, reveals 
a pernicious ethnocentric gaze. 25  Such an assumption creates difficulties in the 
understanding of the historical transformation as something gradual, chained, 

                                                 
24 And still explicit: “There is no religion without magic, or magic that does not contain at least a grain of religion. 
The notion of a supernatural exists for a humanity which attributes itself to supernatural powers and which in 
turn lends nature to superhuman powers” (Lévi-Strauss 1989, 247). 
25 “Professor Lévy-Bruhl tells us, to put it in a nutshell, that primitive man has no sober moods at all, that 
he is hopelessly and completely immersed in a mystical frame of mind. Incapable of dispassionate and 
consistent observation, devoid of the power of abstraction, hampered by ‘a decided aversion towards 
reasoning’, he is unable to draw any benefit from experience, to construct or comprehend even the most 
elementary laws of nature” (Malinowski 1954, 25). We must remember another side of Lévy-Bruhl and his 
influence on Febvre and Bloch, with the concepts of “mentality” and “collective representation” (Tambiah 
1990, 87-88). 



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beginning in the Palaeolithic and culminates with our era, which for some would already 
be the Anthropocene. What Malinowski reveals to us is, on the contrary, a gradual 
development of our most striking civilizational characteristics.26 

It is necessary to understand these three functions as equally intelligible and 
intellectualized human activities. They are revealing of the creative potentiality of our 
ancestors in equating the problems that arose. Even the use of magic does not equate 
us with beasts. They are existential programs that pursue objectives to be achieved. 
Actions with well determined purposes, in this sense, are rational actions. They are 
intentional actions. 

“We do not return to the vulgar thesis that magic is a shy and stammering form 
of science”, as Levi-Strauss warned us. Magic, technique, and religious thought are 
three historically constituted possibilities. “Instead of opposing magic and science, it 
would be better to put them in parallel, as two unequal modes of knowledge as to 
theoretical and practical results.” (Lévi-Strauss 1989, 28) 

 
The “savage” was never more than the animal condition, still surrendered to the 
mastery of its needs and instincts, which often pleased us to examine. Neither 
was this consciousness dominated by affectivity nor steeped in confusion and 
participation. (Lévi-Strauss 1989, 58) 

 
Our prejudices nourish a bland anthropology, of “we” against “them”. Or are we to 
insist that before Aristotle there was no logic? Were we not rational? But after all, what 
is logic? It may even seem like a mysterious entity, that guarantees by its use that we 
become the only animals said to be rational. But as we read in Organon, every mystery 
falls apart. Yes, logic is not due to a gene of divine origin, but rather it is simple and 
ordinary words organized in a particular way that then direct the actions of the agents 
more effectively. The slow and gradual construction of logical capacity – and its 
constitutive linguistic base – stimulated unexpected developments in the human 
species. 

The criterion of success in the collective life of animals, and not only humans, is 
due to the effectiveness in interactions with the environment through oral 
communications of understood meanings of the world. One might even say that this 
will be an evolutionary criterion, an agency guiding evolution. It is language that is more 
than literally constituted in the body of this interactive agency. 
 

The Use of Logic: A Historically Situated Learning 
 
Precisely these findings, combined with the fact that Aristotle is the first author known to 
produce a treatise on logic, are symptoms for another finding. This material about which 
Aristotle’s work speaks, was the current language of his time. This was a pre-existing material 
and routinely accessible to all. That is, in Organon, Aristotle “did not invent anything”, in the 
sense that everything that Analytics is about (which was designated as what we call “Logic”) 
was an arduous and remarkable work of systematic organization of the instrumental 
linguistic bases of analytical thought, later said to be rational. 27  In reality, the most 
appropriate forms of action driven by a correct and efficient reasoning for the achievement 
of goals and objectives, have historically been constructed in the daily work of human 

                                                 
26 Tambiah makes some criticisms to the work of Malinowski, especially (Tambiah 1990, 72), alongside substantive 
compliments (Tambiah 1990, 70-71). His criticisms, however, did not weigh on my judgment. 
27Organon, besides being a treatise on logic, is also a monumental study of the philosophy of language. Through 
it one can observe how logic and language are intertwined. 



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inhabitants in the last millennia. A long and arduous human creation. Logic is a historical 
product. 

Yes, logic is a historical production that needs support for its establishment. And the 
support, the structural basis upon which the logical form is imprinted, is language. Our 
symbolic universe, in which language is immersed, presents a hierarchy, a depth. First a 
linguistic base and then possible ways of organizing the signs, the senses. Language carries, 
conveys, forms of meaning. And logic is one such form, just as poetry is another. What 
Aristotle did in Organon was to demonstrate this fact. He explained the linguistic format that 
an inference must obey to be an Analytic. And, of course, he did it by ordering and modelling 
the terms of the support language, organizing the meanings issued by the subject. He 
established the syllogistic procedure to obtain conclusive meaning effects. They are effects 
of meaning that guarantee us greater effectiveness in the practice of life. The importance of 
logic, of its ordination, long before Aristotle, was to make the actions directed by language 
more effective in the human routine. The pre-Aristotelian “organon” was given by the 
effectiveness of human actions guided by language. 

For example, what is the position of the cut and the correct height of a branch or stem 
to prepare and produce seedlings? These are questions that, when verbalized and thus 
shared in human groups, show language in action. An action whose shared effectiveness only 
occurs if the language used to characterize this process, has the same practical consequence 
as those presented by the empirical learning with the stakes of the native plant. In semiology 
it is said that both have the same effect of sense. That is, if the stakes used by subjects in 
both descriptive forms are equally successful, and their process produce seedlings from the 
plant. The language-driven action portrays the causality extracted from the farmer’s 
observations. The logic expressed in language shows the supposed material connections 
observed in the world. This is language in effective action.  

Here is an alert, sounding like an omen, about an urgent need for anthropological 
research: it is necessary to develop ethnographic studies that show, with rigour, how this 
human conquest – of language and, subsequently, of logical – has occurred throughout 
history. This need is even stronger because Aristotle has not been able, by non-existence, to 
make any reference to some previous work.28 That is to say, the rules of efficient logical 
reasoning, right and true, were already circulated and socially consolidated, now fit for 
Aristotle to systematize them. My question is: how has this historical construction occurred 
since the most archaic eras? Is it an attempt to reproduce something that occurs in the world? 
I agree that it is a human creation, yes, but due to the interaction with the environment, due 
to the observation/perception of the functioning of the natural world. And in that sense, 
would it be a copy of the occurrences in the world? 

These questions refer us to another, more fundamental question: what is the language-
world relationship? Does human logic reproduce a logic of nature? When speaking of “laws 
of nature”, is the genitive correct? Or is it a human construction, a proposition of scientists? 
Is there a logic of nature? Finally, I present here, in this text, many more doubts than solutions 
to the intricate relation of thought to practice. 

Today, what can be said strictly about the language-world relationship is that “the 
effect of meaning retained in language, exposed by language, is the same as that obtained 
from the world through our interaction with the environment.” In this sentence, which I have 
emphasized in the quotation marks, is missing an element that is essential: the subject that 
captures the meaning of both the sentence and the world. The subject is the link between 
language and world. Effect of meaning is a semiological concept that cannot do without the 

                                                 
28 Aristotle himself acknowledges “who, before him, had nothing to cite, despite the pains he suffered in search 
of possible previous sources, from which his analytical and rhetorical exercise constitute the first in the Greek 
school and, as a result, in the other schools.” (Gomes 1985, 9) 



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subject. The subject equals the retained literal meaning of a linguistic expression to the 
perceived meaning of some event in the world.29 Without subject there is no language. 

Thus, there are those who want to see the language-world relationship as a relation of 
“copy”, of “representation”, but that is not what it is about, it is a misunderstanding.  

It is also a clarification, the most productive definition of language goes beyond 
literality and, based on semiology, enters the meanings. 

 
The idea of a language expands beyond linguistics, gains materiality and advances 
through ethnology. Language, in this expanded sense, a broad sense, will be 
conceptualized as that which carries and articulates the meanings apprehended by the 
subjects, whether they are apprehensions of the literal sense given by words or by the 
semiological sense given by objects. It is more than literal language. (Maia 2015, 20) 

 
Without demeaning the importance and necessity of the ontological understanding of 
the world, for a historical knowledge, the metaphysical propositions of being are quite 
problematic. For metaphysics can lead us to the thought of being itself, erasing its 
conditions of historical possibility. Exactly this notion fuels the claim of considering 
language as a copy of something in the real world. In this sense, two entities are 
compared as if they were autonomous: the language and the world, also called, real. 
But the existence of language depends on humans, and not only, it also depends on the world 
and its interactions with. Just as the perceived world also depends on the language that 
designs and qualifies it. 30  This innovative understanding is a merit of considering 
language as more than literal, forged by meanings, and not as a system of signs simply 
as a form of communication. The world itself is only perceived through the concepts 
that express its meanings.31  

Historians cannot think of a reality of super-sensible and isolated beings, without 
their conditioning environments, without their constitutive relations. The qualities of 
being itself seem like illusions that offend the historical understanding of both the 
material environment, and human beings. The entities that populate history are 
relational entities. They interact with each other. For history is more than useful, it is 
necessary, to replace metaphysics with pragmatics. 

 
Metaphysics, an Idealistic Illusion before History? 
 
By metaphysical bias, entities seem to have a life of their own, having autonomy. They 
seem to gain concrete and independent existence, as isolated entities. Sneaky nouns 
are created that gain ontological reality, become beings in themselves. As with logic, 
reason, language, causality, magic, science... and, in these cases, they are usually 
capitalized: Science, Nation, Truth etc. We are against this guidance. 

I see how problematic this thought is: to suppose a Real beyond the reality 
experienced in sensible life, a Real achieved only by reflection, by the use of Reason, 
with the purpose of unveiling the primitive and transcendent nature of the Being that 
would be the base the world. This phrase is completely alien to the territory frequented 
by a historian. 

                                                 
29 This is the role of Derrida's “trace”, as quoted in note 8, see Maia 2015, 118 ff, 134-137. The subject is the one 
who captures a vestige (trace) of something in the world and gives it meaning and thus imposes on the vestige a 
linguistic expression. It is more than literal language in action, see quoted text, below. 
30 Remember Peter Winch, already quoted: “It is not reality that gives meaning to language. The real and the 
unreal are shown in the sense that language has” (Winch 1994, 37).  
31 This is a consequence of Fleck, of his style of thought that provides a directed view, Gestaltsehen. See Maia 2015, 
118-121, see also Fleck 2010, 142. 



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The metaphysical influences that privilege the analysis of being itself are multiple 
and varied. Those who highlight magic and science as two isolated and conflicting 
entities qualify magic as superstition, which is a mistake, and science as truth. But in 
this way, they lose decisive elements in each of these entities. An integral 
understanding demands that they be evaluated by their contents and by their relations, 
among themselves, and with their surroundings. Comparing passion fruit with mango 
may make sense on some occasions, but nothing speaks of the specific characteristics 
of these fruits. It is a comparison that may be suitable for the consumer in the 
supermarket, or at the table, but little is clarified about these fruits, their agricultural 
needs and their characteristics in cultivation, or their botanical constitution. The 
passion fruit tree is a vine and the mango tree is a sturdy tree with a woody trunk. 
Removing the fruit from the plant that produces it impoverishes any evaluation. Like 
comparing magic and science without the society that surrounds and produces them. 
In that case, it is absolutely useless to compare magic from primitive tribes to modern 
science. It simply serves to justify prejudice. 

After all, each historical entity is a production originated from a certain economic 
and social formation. To understand magic, it is appropriate to follow in Malinowski's 
footsteps, to examine the relationships established in that society. 

We are faced with intellectual impoverishment by letting ourselves be influenced 
by metaphysics. The act of “metaphysical” discourse, creating entities, is a violent act 
against historical thought. Things, like historical entities, have a process of production 
inherent in them. Nothing is born out of nothing, nor lies in the vacuum of the socio-
material conditions of existence. History and metaphysics thus lie at opposite poles in 
cognitive inquiry. 

For us historians, the most divergent question between metaphysics and history 
is that of their respective objects of study. Metaphysics applies to transcendence and 
to the earliest causes, away from the empiricism of the routine facts of life. Unlike 
history, it seeks the reality underlying the reality of phenomena, the Real. However, to 
abandon the human perceptions retained from the world, and to exclude the opinions 
based on the sensory activity of the individuals in favour of a transcendent knowledge, 
is a hard blow against history. It is true that personal judgement is not a guarantee of 
truth, but who has it? Universal Reason? 

And the problems for the history continue. Everything indicates that there has been a 
contamination of the question of causality by metaphysical proposals. Causality is not an 
ethereal substance, it is a material relation between things in the world. Around the notion 
of cause and effect there are several unknowns and explanatory omissions, there is 
something magical and mysterious in the conception that links the cause with its 
consequence. The solution of this imbroglio cannot be a mystique that designates something 
resembling a transcendental reason. There is a need to produce an epistemological strategy 
that will exhibit and explain it satisfactorily in the investigation of the causal nature of 
phenomena. Cause and effect, connected together, is a notion that refers to the 
phenomenal world, and to the events of the world. It is a relational notion whose claim 
is to be indicating the manner in which one event is necessarily produced by another. 
But to say that one thing produces another is to go beyond hypothetical logical 
connection discourse, or vague subjective perception. To do so, it is essential to 
demonstrate how causality occurs in our world of facts. How does the outbreak of the 
consequence arise from the cause that precedes it. It is necessary to retract in detail 
the effect being part of the cause. The crucial question is: how does that indicated as 
cause, effectively produce its effect? The demonstration of the nexus causal link between 
cause and effect, is essential when it comes to causality. 



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It should be noted that causality generally occurs as a process, a causal process. The 
concept of “process”, coming from the natural sciences, refers to a sequence of interrelated 
occurrences, each with its causal nexus. The causal process designates a chain of events that, 
starting from a first cause, produces as a consequence a series of consecutive effects, as it 
happens with the process of development of a foetus until arriving at the adult stage. 

The stages of human development since prehistory attest to the importance of the 
understanding obtained through the notion of causality. In the Palaeolithic, removing 
splinters by making the planned collision between two stones meant having cause and effect 
as something almost simultaneous, which greatly facilitates the perception of the causal 
relationship. Already in the Neolithic, cause and consequence can be separated by days, 
months and even years. Imagine the motivation of ploughing the land and planting ears of 
corn. It takes several articulated and sequential actions with a goal to be realized in the 
distant future. What about the castration of young animals with a view to their slaughter – 
more fruitful – years later? 

Thus, the so-called logical reasoning has become increasingly routine, including 
being applied to magic-religious conceptions, and not only in the technical practice of 
work. Through this instrument, empirical foundations have been formed to educate and 
foster our reasoning, called, logical. By this we can affirm that, long before Aristotle, the 
pragmatics of human actions invented logic. 

The literature on the prehistoric cognitive stages is still quite lacking in the closer 
examination of the importance of causality. Understanding the world and the 
possibilities of human action in this world through causal relations propitiated – I 
suppose – the development of human evolutionary traits, and transformed its cultural 
phenotype. It was through the causal understanding that the desire for power, which 
guides the magic, found its reason for being and its modus operandi. In magic, fantastic 
desire can be seen as the cause of its demands. The prehistoric subject designs for 
himself the agency aspired by his desire; he supposes to hold a magical power that acts 
on other individuals, on plants and animals. From the understanding of causal relations, 
the primitive being “created” the magic. By the same procedure, one sees that the 
more refined understanding of causality with pragmatics also decrees its opposite, the 
decline of magic. It suffices to verify that the spell does not rigorously comply with 
what is desired in the actions of the magician: the consequences of magical acts are not 
observed with the expected frequency. The ritual is not enough to have a good harvest 
as magic does not guarantee it. It is necessary though to simultaneously apply the 
technical knowledge already acquired. This does provide a greater guarantee of 
success. In this way, the same conditions that foster the appearance of magical thinking 
also impose the evidences of its limits. To this, Keith Thomas noted that Malinowski 
already had the elements that indicated the weakening of the magical power.32 

These magical-mystical conditions involving metaphysics propagate and reach various 
latitudes. They contaminate idyllic myths of human nature that extend to Christianity and 
beyond. It is by obeying these rules that we become special beings in nature: “children of the 
first cause”, made in the image of God. And as such, we receive a gift, the Reason. We 
become rational beings capable of apprehending and glorifying the divine work, the causality 
that organizes and directs the world. The world has, from these premises, its own 
organization, its jurisprudence: the natural laws. With causality driven by Christianized 
metaphysics, there are prescriptions to be followed by the natural world and, of course, by 
men; everything that occurs is causal and emanates from an organizing intelligence of the 

                                                 
32 The cultural decline of magic historically occurs with the impossibility of showing how magic (as a cause) actually 
produces its consequences, its effects. Like the "evil eye”, does the destruction of the sign of an opponent’s name, 
or the piercing of a needle-cloth doll produce their wrongs in others? How does the rain dance work? After all, it 
will always rain at some point after the dancing ritual. See also: Thomas 1991, 524, 527, 681-682. 



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universe. When modern science was performed, researching and discovering “the laws of 
nature”, it was being motivated by this idyllic metaphysics. Science followed its mystical 
mythic origin myths. And the human being, as the most illustrious subject of deity, can and 
ought through knowledge guided by his gift of reason, unmask such natural causalities. Thus, 
we see that not only magic has among its ingredients the transcendental magic potion of 
mysticism. Science also drinks from the same source. The roots of modern science grow over 
the same mythical swamp that gives rise to magic.  

Of course, the differences and similarities between the magic of “cold societies”, as 
Levi-Strauss used to say,33 and modern science make comparative study attractive, but this 
requires a lot of care. The greatest of these is the temptation for anachronistic analysis. But 
note that in metaphysics there is no difficulty in comparing primitive magic with modern 
science, despite its temporal distance of thousands of years and its spatial drift. They are 
products of completely different societies, they are two distinct social and economic 
formations. But in metaphysics this is not the question, it is not an impediment. When one 
reaches the essence, the truth of being, it becomes the absolute Truth, regardless of any 
context or chronicity. Thus, one can compare Magic with Science. There is no historical error, 
there is no anachronism, since metaphysics does not take into account the historical 
conditions of production. There is no metaphysical relativism to act as an obstacle to the 
comparative analysis of these entities. Despite the difference between their historicities, 
they occupy the same analytical space. After all, metaphysics is the realm of absolute, 
timeless beings.  

It does not question the existence of perception of causality, but the authenticity 
of causality as something transcendental. What is in doubt here, and is simply a doubt, 
is the ontological consideration of causality, and its existence as if it were an entity. 
Without the need for material reasoning, as if his perception were enough to make his 
agency explicit. 

 

Towards a Conclusion:  
Magic, Science and Religion and the Perception of a Causality 
 
But here I intend to focus on another aspect in addition to causality being considered 
as a subjective question, or a metaphysical proposition. I disregard the concept of an 
objective truth for causality, and I concentrate on the actual practice of its perception. 
I emphasize the use people make of their perceptions. After all, it is these perceptions 
that fuel your beliefs and motivate your behaviour and actions. And such consequences 
are independent of the value of truth that the supposed perceived causality has. That 
is, even if wrong, the perception of some causality is already causal. If individuals 
perceive relationships that they consider causal relationships, it is enough for effects 
to take place and for them to gain historical reality. The resulting assemblages produce 
movements and differences. This is the basis of the dynamics of human action on the 
environment, whether in the instrumental techniques of survival, whether in science, 
in magic, or in religion. 

To have or not to have the perception of something – that can be designated as 
causality – is an essential condition for ensuring the success, or otherwise, of the 
development of animal life in its interaction with the world, in its struggles for 
existence. 

The perception of cause-and-effect relationships had two major consequences. 
Thanks to the belief in the metaphysics of causality, the human being constructed 

                                                 
33 “The clumsy distinction between 'peoples without history' and others could be advantageously replaced by a 
distinction between what we call [...] ‘cold' societies and 'warm' societies” (Lévi-Strauss 1989, 259). 



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religions, spells and diverse sciences. On the other hand, thanks to the belief in the 
pragmatics of causality, man devoted himself to routine work to survive, and to 
transform the world. 

As Aristotle pointed out, causality allows us to establish a safe procedure for the 
attainment of knowledge. However, for such knowledge to be useful and to integrate 
the historical collection of human practices over time, from one society to another, it 
must satisfy certain requirements of every public good: must be accessible to all, and 
be universally known. After all, all knowledge – to be called as such – must be collective, 
that is, it needs to be socially shared. And of course, its diffusion and general 
reproduction require some pedagogy to spread the knowledge of how to execute it. 

This pedagogy must contain some symbolic and pragmatic features. The symbolic 
character stems from the need for the causal process to be understood as an event in 
itself, that is a signifier and that it gains meaning. The pragmatic aspect associated with 
this meaning makes explicit the step-by-step of that knowledge transformed into an 
action. That is, it must be shown how effectively a cause produces its effect – a 
requirement, still of Aristotle (2016, 269), that the act of knowing requests its 
demonstration. 

The core of causality lies in the meaning that the subject establishes. This 
understanding, which provides a centrality for the subject, for the perception of the 
subject, leads us to a subjectivist explanatory mode. However, in this model, the 
subject's belief refers to an apparent paradox, since it assumes that there is a causal 
relation between facts in the world. That is, subjectivism relies on another belief, on 
the natural objectivity of the world. This confrontation between the orientations of 
objectivism and subjectivism becomes a difficulty in the understanding of causality. 
Both perspectives have a common basis, consider subject and object as separate, 
independent entities. Now the accent falls on the object, or on the subject. Double 
equivocation. The core of the subject-object question is not found in any of the parts, 
isolated by analytical devices. The effective question is: the interaction between them. 
An interaction that is both mental and material. This is the sense of a symbolic agency 
that must be looked at by theory of practice.34 

To reaffirm this pragmatic posture, considering both objectivism and 
subjectivism, it can be said that without the subject-object interaction there is no 
causality. Without an object, without the world, there is no way for a being to become 
a subject. On the other hand, without a subject there is no theory of Newton's 
gravitation, nor of Einstein's. There is no science, no magic, no religion. Science, magic, 
and religion are human narratives that describe the possible forms of subject-world 
interactions in the world. 

Such interactions always occur under the aegis of the practice that transforms a 
doing into a knowing and vice versa. And it is with the know-how that a new knowledge 
takes root and enters human history, it becomes an historical fact incorporated into the 
becoming of future societies, as with the domination and routine use of fire. And this 
occurs not only with the cultivation of vegetables and the extraction of natural goods, 
but also with the domestication of animals. 

In interacting with the world, the human being perceives some regularities, there are 
recurring occurrences, such as day and night. There are sequences of events that seem to 
indicate that some predate others, such as breastfeeding after birth in mammals, or after 
flowering follow the fruits. There is also a different class of events in which human activity 
proves to produce desired and programmed consequences. Like the one that produces stone 
chips to be used as blades. Or like the one that makes a cudgel from the tibia of a great animal, 
                                                 
34 Explaining what is implied: symbolic-material agency. This interactivity has already been well explored in Maia 
2015, 79 ff and in specific article, Maia 2017. 



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or that that digging out and modelling a tree trunk produces a canoe. However, not all 
regularities are well acquainted with the model of causality, such as seasonal succession 
(although spring always succeeds the winter, it is not appropriate to say that winter causes 
spring). Rigour requires that there be a demonstration, a logical implication of the 
antecedent toward the consequent, that is, a factual description of the interconnected 
causal stages. 

The idea of cause was striking not only for scientific research or to produce magic, as 
we have seen, but it was much broader in its effects. It drives human actions routinely to face 
the difficulties encountered in their environment, therefore equating them. And even more, 
it was by observing and understanding the effects of the use of tools, and the practice of 
working with such tools, that human participation was allowed to produce something. The 
tool and associated work were considered as the causes of the production of goods and 
satisfaction of their needs. In this way, the notion of cause contributes firmly to the 
development of culture, as Dewey had already pointed out. 

It was this condition of adaptation to the environment that allowed human 
societies to conquer rigorous logical thinking as a form of possibility for the 
development of what is called rationality. The human being becomes the “rational 
animal” as a result of their collective interactions, of the historical sharing of their life 
experiences, of organizing a grammar for thought, considering the continuous learning 
in the use of symbolic linguistic forms associated with material practices. 

Concluding: man is not born as a rational human being, but he becomes one; that 
is, rationality is a human gift, yes, but a gift built, and produced by the historical evolver. 
From the Palaeolithic to the threshold of the Anthropocene, resulting from the practice 
shared in their interactions with the environment. 

 

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