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Magic Science Religion explores surprising intersections among the three meaning-making and world-making practices named in the title. Through colorful examples, the book reveals circuitous ways that social, cultural and natural systems connect, enabling real kinds of magic to operate. Among the many case studies are accounts of how an eighteenth-century actor gave his audience goosebumps; how painters, poets, and pool sharks use nonlinearity in working their magics; how the first vertebrates gained consciousness; how plants fine-tuned human color vision; and the necessarily magical element of activism that builds on the conviction that "another future is possible" while working to push self-fulfilling prophecy into political action.
Ira Livingston teaches and directs Poetics Lab at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn. His many books - such as the 2015 digital book Poetics as a Theory of Everything (available free online) - cultivate hybrids of cultural studies and systems theory.
Acknowledgments.About this Book1 Introduction1 All or Nothing? 2 Kindness ASIDE: The Two-Million-Dollar CommaASIDE: Sufficiently Magical TechnologiesASIDE: Our Gods3 Cruelty ASIDE: Ghostly CausalityASIDE: Durable Cruelties4 Beginning, Again ASIDE: Chaos Invoked5 The Freedom Not to Choose ASIDE: No Atheists in FoxholesASIDE: Blake on Firm PerswasionASIDE: Metafictional Magic: The Writer’s WillASIDE: Shapely SentencesASIDE: Beckett Meets Twilight Zone, Glass-Half-Full Version2 Complex Systems in a Nutshell1 Horror Movie Reboot 2 Interpositivity ASIDE: Interpositivity3 Becoming a System 4 Creatures of Light ASIDE: Transformative for Whom?ASIDE: Plant Sorcery5 Tornados, Whirlpools, and Fires ASIDE: iiiASIDE: Co-evolution6 Leveled ASIDE: On being born too early and dying too lateASIDE: Up Around the Bend7 A Personifying Universe of Stretchy Things 8 Dynamism ASIDE: One Plus One Equals Infinity9 Magic, but No Black Boxes ASIDE: The T-Shirt Version10 Wildness ASIDE: Pet Resemblance via Social Theory3 Magic by Example1 Failed Magic: Modernist Heaven (and Hell)2 Placebo Magic ASIDE: Pregnancy via MagicASIDE: Following the Scent3 Mirror Magic 4 Biting Game 5 Dog Whisperer 6 Conclusion 4 Future Perfect1 The Gettysburg Address as a Magical Speech Act 2 Pool, Poetry, Prose, and Painting ASIDE: Dr. Livingston’s Magical Bank-Shot Visualizer3 Meteors, Messiahs, and Migraines ASIDE: On This Rock I Build My ChurchASIDE: Falling Off a Log4 Magical Militarism 5 Four Asides ASIDE: Dr. Livingston’s Time Travel 101ASIDE: A Somewhat Rationalizing Account of Mystical NonviolenceASIDE: A Somewhat Mysticizing Account of Rationalist NonviolenceASIDE: Four Scholars5 What is Religion?1 A Fuzzy Set 2 Magic, Science, and Religion Coevolve 3 Restoring the Chaos 4 Rain Dance ASIDE: From Flow5 Providence, via Vico ASIDE: Systematizers Systematized6 God 3.5B (A Nearsighted Evolutionary Panorama)1 Salience to Sentience 2 Primordial Systemhood Membership Narratives ASIDE: Law and Order3 The Myth of the Acquisition-of-Consciousness Moment 4 Use of the Terms I and We5 Cis-Systems → Trans-Systems 6 First Caveat: Characters 7 Plant and Animal Intelligence 8 Learning and Evolution from a Systems Perspective 9 Second Caveat: Plot 10 Especially Informative Postinfundibular Amphioxus Hypothalamus Neuropile 11 The Holy Grail ASIDE: Neuro-X12 Teamlikeness ASIDE: Play and TeamlikenessASIDE: Three-Ring Circuits13 Conclusion 7 Blake Magic1 Famous in Heaven ASIDE: No Success Like Failure2 Blake Magic 3 Auguries ASIDE: Prophecies4 Angel Kings 5 Magic in the Current Conjuncture 6 Five Asides ASIDE: Black Lives Matter and Judith ButlerASIDE: An Elegant PoseASIDE: Ritual RetractionASIDE: ObscurityASIDE: Butterfly TornadoReferencesIndex
