How We Believe_ Science and the Search for God - Michael Shermer [34]
Some Zande medicines actually do produce the effect aimed at, but so far as I have been able to observe the Zande does not make any qualitative distinction between these medicines and those that have no objective consequences. To him they are all alike ngua, medicine, and all are operated in magical rites in much the same manner. A Zande observes taboos and fish-poisons before throwing them into the water just as he addresses a crocodile’s tooth while he rubs the stems of his bananas with it to make them grow. And the fish-poison really does paralyze the fish while, truth to tell, the crocodile’s tooth has no influence over bananas.
As ethnobotanist Alondra Oubré has demonstrated, these Type 1 and 2 Errors and Hits of indigenous peoples are very valuable because not only do they sometimes get it right, that knowledge can be used to our benefit in the treatment of diseases (and thus they should be so compensated for their magical knowledge that translates into life-saving medicines for us).
2.
The Yanomamö. In similar fashion, Napoleon Chagnon discovered in his years among the Yanomamö people of South America that in some villages magical plants are cultivated and used for a number of functions, including the seduction of young women (the powder of a plant is pressed against the woman’s nose and mouth at which “she swoons and has an unsatiable desire for sex——so say both the men and the women”); to make men tranquil and sedate (“it is thrown on the men especially when they are fighting”); the destruction of an enemy (“People allegedly cultivate an especially malevolent plant that can be ‘blown’ on enemies at a great distance, or sprinkled on unwary male visitors while they sleep”); and blaming your enemies for your own misfortunes (“All Yanomamö groups are convinced that unaccountable deaths in their own village are the result of the use of harmful magic and charms directed at them by enemy groups”).
According to Chagnon, such magical thinking serves a very pragmatic and useful purpose, as in the Yanomamö jaguar myths, which exist because “the jaguar is an awesome and much-feared beast, for he can and does kill and eat men. He is as good a hunter as the Yanomamö are and is one of the few animals in the forest that hunts and kills men—as the Yanomamö themselves do.” The Yanomamö Belief Engine has constructed these myths and superstitions for a very specific problem of survival in an uncertain and dangerous world.
3.
The Trobriand Islanders. From 1914 to 1918 the anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski lived among the Trobriand Islanders off the coast of New Guinea. In Trobriand fishing practices Malinowski discovered that the farther out to sea the islanders went, the more complex the superstitious rituals became. In the calm waters of the inner lagoon, there were very few rituals. By the time they reached the dangerous waters of deep-sea fishing, the Trobrianders were deep into magic. In his 1925 essay, “Magic, Science, and Religion,” Malinowski concluded that this belief system served the function of dealing with the anxiety produced by uncertainty. Contrary to his fellow anthropologists of the time, who held a progressive “stage” theory of superstition—with so-called primitives and their superstitions on the bottom, and white Europeans with their science on top—Malinowski discovered that magical thinking derived from environmental conditions, not inherent stupidities: “We find magic wherever the elements of chance and accident, and the emotional play between hope and fear have a wide and extensive range. We do not find magic wherever the pursuit is certain, reliable, and well under the control of rational methods and technological processes. Further, we find magic where the element of danger