ABSTRACT
Stanley Tambiah is Emeritus Professor and the Esther and Sidney Rabb Professor of Anthropology at Harvard University. The majority of his research and publications concentrate on Buddhism, especially in its relationship with politics in Thailand and Sri Lanka, and include an insistence on asking difficult questions. The following extract engages with a rather different controversy: the relationship between magic, religion, science and rationality. In particular, he is interested in the demarcations made between these putatively separate discourses or practices by Bronislaw Malinowski. Malinowski's characterization of "science" was both simplistic and generous when he actually credited the Trobrianders with the possession of scientific knowledge. Religious action was not like magic a means to an end, it was an end in itself and it celebrated ultimate values, such as Providence and Immortality. The subject matter of every religion is the twin beliefs in Providence and Immortality.
