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essay about superstition in modern life​

Answer 1

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This elegantly, if somewhat emotionally, nostalgic book represents in large part a crusade against E. O. Wilson's recently published book, Consilience. Although the author claims to be a farmer, I note that he has published some nine pieces of fiction, more than a dozen poems and essays. He states his position early on (p. 4) "our starting place is always and only our experience." Does he consider that what we learn from reading and from school are irrelevant or are they part of our experience? If "experience" is sufficiently broadened then the statement becomes meaningless. I fear that Mr. Berry's science base is inadequate to his task as exemplified by his statement (p. 39) "It is a curious paradox of science that its empirical knowledge of the material world gives rise to abstractions such as statistical averages which have no materiality and exist only as ideas." The room temperature when he wrote this phrase was in fact a statistical average of the momentum of all the gas particles, largely nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon dioxide in the room at that time. Many molecules at any given instant were moving more rapidly than average and some more slowly. The measured temperature is exactly the average of them

Then Berry's quote "stay out of the nuclei" (presumably both the cell nucleus and the atomic nucleus) appears to prevent us from using atomic power that civilization must eventually utilize or die, and biologically prevents us from any knowledge of genetics and hence any knowledge of diseases of genetic origin. Surprisingly, Berry has this to say about psychology: "The science closest to art (in the opinion, anyhow, of many artists) is psychology and especially psychoanalysis."

In another vein he states (p. 138) "One of the most significant costs of the economic destruction of farm populations is the loss of local memory, local history, and local names." Field names, for instance, even such colorless names as "the front field" and "the back field" are vital signs of a culture. On the farm I own with several colleagues, we have "the long field," "the dog leg field," and "the principle pasture."

But enough quibbles; Berry tenderly cherishes old and romantic notions and resolutely refuses to adopt a materialistic view of life. He writes lyrically about what he considers to be true values. The book is worth a read both for those who agree with this viewpoint as well as the most materialistic reductionists. Perhaps, however, a reread of Wilson's Consilience should go along with it.

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Answer 2

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essay about superstition in modern life

Superstition in the modern era is less likely to be contrasted with true religion and more likely to be viewed as the opposite of science, reason, or modernity. Campaigns to abolish superstition have continued but have not usually been motivated by interest in purifying religion. The early twentieth-century Chinese government in its efforts to modernize Chinese culture employed a new concept, mixin, usually translated as "superstition," to denote many aspects of popular religion previously called xie, "heterodoxy." This linguistic change accompanied a shift from the Neo-Confucian strategy of incorporating popular religion as a support for the established order to one of actively suppressing many aspects of it. The Chinese nationalist government's 1928 decree "Standards for Preserving and Abandoning Gods and Shrines," attacked superstition as opposed to science and progress. The decree distinguished between cults, which remained permissible, mostly those of deified humans such as Confucius and the Buddha, and "superstitious" cults, which were outlawed, mostly those of nature deities such as the god of rain. It was followed by several other antisuperstition edicts attacking divination and other magical practices.

Even when lacking the coercive power of a state or church, rationalist and scientistic polemicists continue to describe the beliefs of their opponents as superstitious. Psychologists have investigated the human propensity for superstitious beliefs, attempting to identify those populations most and least likely to adopt superstitions. The causes for superstition they have put forth include the human propensity to ascribe meaning to coincidence or to assert control over uncontrollable events. Much of this work has been placed in a context hostile to superstition, seeing the identification of superstition's causes as essential to fighting it and defending rational thought. The idea of "superstition" has even been broadened beyond human beings; B. F. Skinner (1904–1990), in his 1947 paper on "Superstition in the Pigeon," gave a behavioralist interpretation of superstition. Skinner claimed to have produced in pigeons a tendency to repeat behavior associated with food getting, even when there was no real causal connection between the behavior and the appearance of food. He suggested that superstitious beliefs in humans could originate in the same way.

Even when lacking the coercive power of a state or church, rationalist and scientistic polemicists continue to describe the beliefs of their opponents as superstitious. Psychologists have investigated the human propensity for superstitious beliefs, attempting to identify those populations most and least likely to adopt superstitions. The causes for superstition they have put forth include the human propensity to ascribe meaning to coincidence or to assert control over uncontrollable events. Much of this work has been placed in a context hostile to superstition, seeing the identification of superstition's causes as essential to fighting it and defending rational thought. The idea of "superstition" has even been broadened beyond human beings; B. F. Skinner (1904–1990), in his 1947 paper on "Superstition in the Pigeon," gave a behavioralist interpretation of superstition. Skinner claimed to have produced in pigeons a tendency to repeat behavior associated with food getting, even when there was no real causal connection between the behavior and the appearance of food. He suggested that superstitious beliefs in humans could originate in the same way.Anthropologists and folklorists have continued their studies of superstition, producing a myriad of studies of superstitions in particular geographical areas, among particular subcultures such as actors or baseball players, and concerning particular subjects, such as cats or fertility

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