Magic, witchcraft and superstition

Witchcraft and Magic in Ireland

Witchcraft and magic in Europe. Volume 3: The Middle Ages

universities outside Germany like Montpellier, Basle, and Cambridge. The activities of Simone Simoni (1532-1602) at Geneva, Heidelberg and Leipzig are instructive in this respect, as was shown long ago by Frank Ludwig (Neues Archiv fiir siichsische Geschichte und Altertumskunde, 1909, 30: 209-90). Equally, while Paracelsus' own view of the body militated against any commitment to anatomical stu...

The Caries Phenomenon: A Timeline from Witchcraft and Superstition to Opinions of the 1500s to Today's Science

This historical treatise follows the documented timeline of tooth decay into today's understanding, treatment, and teaching of caries biology. Caries has been attributed to many different causes for several millennia, however, only since the late 1900s has research revealed its complex multifactorial nature. European writers of the 1600s to 1700s held views that general health, mechanical injur...

Magic and Witchcraft Implications for Democratization and Poverty-Alleviating Aid in Africa

The belief in occult forces is still deeply rooted in many African societies, regardless of education, religion, and social class of the people concerned. According to many Africans its incidence is even increasing due to social stress and strain caused (among others) by the process of modernization. Most often magic and witchcraft accusations work to the disadvantage of the poor and deprived, ...

Superstition and Rational Learning by Superstition and Rational Learning

We argue that some but not all superstitions can persist when learning is rational and players are patient, and illustrate our argument with an example inspired by the code of Hammurabi. The code specified an “appeal by surviving in the river” as a way of deciding whether an accusation was true, so it seems to have relied on the superstition that the guilty are more likely to drown than the inn...