Robert’s Comments (group member since Oct 03, 2013)

Robert’s comments from the Winter Reading Project group.

Frazer seems to have info on all kinds of exotic cultures, as well as familiar and contemporary ones. How does he know all this?

In chapter III, section 1. The Principles of Magic, just before he tabulates the branches of magic, Frazer says of Sympathetic Magic, "...things act on each other at a distance through a secret sympathy, the impulse being transmitted from one to the other by means of what we might conceive as a kind of invisible ether, not unlike that which is postulated by modern science for a precisely similar purpose, namely, to explain how things can physically affect each other through a space which appears to be empty."

Just a note on that "ether". At the end of the 19th century is was hypothesized that forces like gravity and electromagnetism traveled through this ether. Note that the original version of his book came out in 1890, which predates the famous Mickleson/Morley experiment designed to find this ether. They failed, and the conclusion was that it did not exist. This was to play a role in Albert Einstein's development of the Theory of Relativity.

I also like his use of the word "homeopathic," as such medicine is supposed to work exactly as he describes, via sympathetic magic. Though it has no scientific foundation, sadly the placebo effect is often mistaken for the efficacy of homeopathic medicine.

The full twelve volumes are available for free at the following link:

http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/...