Fortieth anniversary symposium: Science, religion, and secularity in a technological society - Magic, religion, science, technology, and ethics in the postmodern world

In this essay I argue that magic, religion, science, technology, and ethics are components of cultures that coexist at every stage of the evolution of societies and cultures and are interconnected and intertwined with each other within the web of relationships with other components of social life and culture. They undergo changes under the influence of each other and of social and cultural factors that coevolve with them throughout the history of humanity in the direction of democratization. The religion-and-science discussion is embedded within the framework of the postmodern social scientific discourse to illustrate that the apparent contradictions or substitutions disappear and that in actual human experience there is cooperation and complementarity between these elements of culture.