AHSS 2030 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Peanut Butter, Human Condition, Sleep Paralysis
16 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Folk Belief Historically 17th, 18th century
• Humans began to reconsider their place in the universe at this time
➢ Human condition, Renaissance
• Science, folk belief and religion were all dealing with the same realm
➢ All techniques to make sense of the world
Science vs Folk Belief
• Science has to do with known, understood logic, whereas folk belief focuses on the
metaphysical (not about known logic but what is hard to understand)
• Scientific knowledge tends to be learned by institutional means (ie. School, textbooks,
laboratories) whereas folk knowledge tends to be passed along in the community, not
institutional learning, it is face to face interaction (even virtual)
• Science is driven by casual logic (cause and effect) whereas folk belief tends to be driven
by an unknown or symbolic logic
Superstition
• Relationship between conditions and results
➢ Ie. Red skies at night (condition), sailors delight (result)
➢ Ie. Break a mirror (condition) is seven years of bad luck (result)
➢ Groundhog Day is Feb. 2 (condition), six more weeks of winter (result)
• Why is luck so dominant in culture?
➢ Control, give you an edge on controlling future
o Ie. Dot alk uder latter or youll hae ad luk
• Conditions→results→conversions
➢ Conversions are actions you can do to undo the negative result (a second
chance)
➢ Ie. Spill salt→bad luck→pick it up and throw it over your shoulder (get rid of bad
luck)
o Salt used to be a valuable commodity, basically a currency. Ability to
throw it over your shoulder means you have plentiful resources that you
a just thro aay. Siply put: youll e okay, youre ell off
o Salary comes from the word salt
➢ Ie. When two friends are walking and they separate to walk around a pole→
relationship is ended→one must go back around the pole walking backwards
chanting peanut butter and jelly/salt and pepper/ketchup and mustard
How Can We Gauge Belief?
• Religious practices |----------------------------------------|artistic practices
➢ Religious practices- someone enacts a condition and genuinely believes the
result and conversion, belief
➢ Artistic practice- person does conversion and/or result but because it is
expected, or because they think it is funny, non-belief
Legends
• Supernatural legends
➢ Other than the natural world, metaphysical
➢ Ghosts
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Folk belief historically 17th, 18th century: humans began to reconsider their place in the universe at this time. Human condition, renaissance: science, folk belief and religion were all dealing with the same realm. All techniques to make sense of the world. Red skies at night (condition), sailors delight (result) Break a mirror (condition) is seven years of bad luck (result) Control, give you an edge on controlling future. Do(cid:374)(cid:859)t (cid:449)alk u(cid:374)der latter or you(cid:859)ll ha(cid:448)e (cid:271)ad lu(cid:272)k: conditions results conversions. Conversions are actions you can do to undo the negative result (a second chance) Spill salt bad luck pick it up and throw it over your shoulder (get rid of bad luck: salt used to be a valuable commodity, basically a currency. Ability to throw it over your shoulder means you have plentiful resources that you (cid:272)a(cid:374) just thro(cid:449) a(cid:449)ay. Si(cid:373)ply put: you(cid:859)ll (cid:271)e okay, you(cid:859)re (cid:449)ell off: salary comes from the word salt.
