Chapter 4: The uniqueness and universality of magic in culture
Chapter 4: The uniqueness and universality of magic in culture

Summary/Abstract: 4.1 Viewpoint and tasks The understanding of the mutual inversely proportional logic of development for magical and scientific discourse in the modern world has been an illusion. As is seen below, this fact has been tentatively explored, to a certain degree, by psychologists, culturologists, philosophers and linguists. Juri Lotman has analyzed magic as a communication algorithm, which has a universal cultural source and a specific semiotic structure. In the fourth chapter, magic is placed into a wider interpretational and methodological context, in order to create a basis for the description of the algorithms of the intellect as a complete system. The author attempts to reconstruct important structuralistic points of departure that have been inspired by phenomenology, on which rest the semiotic views of Lotman regarding magic (and also other universals).

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