Overcoming magic often takes the form of theology. From animals and ancestors the path leads to all kinds of spirits. The hypothesis (which already appeared in the magical age) of the little man alongside man, the "soul', and of the special being, 'God', more and more often seeks a parallel process 'behind' processes. Whereas in the magical age, empirically given facts were linked with each other on the basis of primitive theories without the introduction of uncontrollable elements, now their introduction becomes essential.
Otto NeurathRelated topics
age behind form given hypothesis man now parallel path primitive soul theology factsRelated quotes
We must assume, at least for the time, the existence of certain great facts in Nature. I do not mean that our man of the world, in taking his first step towards the Path, need either know or recognize these facts. Facts in Nature do not change either with our believing or non-believing. Facts of Nature remain facts whether we know them or not, and since we are here in the realm of Nature, and under the order of law, the knowledge of the facts and the knowledge of the law are not essential for the steps which lead man to the Path.
Annie Besant
The concept of guilt is found most powerfully developed even in the most primitive communal forms which we know: ... the man is guilty who violates one of the original laws which dominate the society and which are mostly derived from a divine founder; the boy who is accepted into the tribal community and learns its laws, which bind him thenceforth, learns to promise; this promise is often given under the sign of death, which is symbolically carried out on the boy, with a symbolical rebirth.
Martin Buber
There's one uneasy borderline between what is external and what is internal, and this borderline is defined exactly by the sense organs and the skin and the introduction of external things within my own body. Consciousness is altered by physical events and physical objects, which impinge upon my sense organs, or which I introduce into my body.
Now the name traditionally given to external objects or processes which change you internally is sacrament. Sacraments are the visible and tangible techniques for bringing you close to your own divinity.
Timothy Leary
The unphilosophical and philosophical attitudes can be very sharply distinguished (with scarcely any intermediate forms) by the fact that the first accepts everything that happens as regards its general form, and finds occasion for surprise only in that special content by which something that happens here today differs from what happened there yesterday; whereas for the second, it is precisely the common features of all experience, such as characterise everything we encounter, which are the primary and most profound occasion for astonishment.
Erwin Schrödinger
It is possible to express the laws of thermodynamics in the form of independent principles, deduced by induction from the facts of observation and experiment, without reference to any hypothesis as to the occult molecular operations with which the sensible phenomena may be conceived to be connected; and that course will be followed in the body of the present treatise. But, in giving a brief historical sketch of the progress of thermodynamics, the progress of the hypothesis of thermic molecular motions cannot be wholly separated from that of the purely inductive theory.
William John Macquorn Rankine