ABSTRACT
While contemporary accounts of rituals describe the narrative, performative and emotional richness of rituals, this chapter focuses on the relationship between rituals and knowledge. Rituals have been associated with blind beliefs and superstition. In general, the application of mathematics clearly illustrates the logic of rituals. One way to see this is through the process of epistemological sanskritization. A study of rituals offers us a different concept which we have to make meaning of — the concept of the “unnecessary.” Surplus is an excess, and excess does not carry the metaphysical baggage of necessity. Rituals as surplus are necessary. This is best illustrated by the use of mathematics in the sciences. Rituals are the ground for method. Rituals prepare the ground, literally, before the formulation of method. If ritual and method are not contradictories, if rituals are seen as the transcendental ground for method, then we can more reasonably understand the nature of applied mathematics and the process of epistemological Sanskritization.
