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This chapter discusses the interpretation of what are commonly labelled magical acts or irrational beliefs, which earlier commentators (Frazer, Malinowski, Evans-Pritchard) often dismissed as failed technology or failed science, if not just superstitious rubbish. Following Tambiah, it introduces the contrast between the goals of ‘efficacy’ and that of ‘felicity’. In many cases the apparent aim is not causal efficacy, i.e. to achieve a particular effect or result, but felicity, where the criterion is rather what is appropriate to the occasion. It takes examples from ancient Greece and China to illustrate how these two criteria may differ and how they play out in the context of medicine, where rival styles of treatment have different aims in their attempts to heal or to secure well-being.

Introduction 1. Humanity between Gods and Beasts? 2. Error 3. Ancient Understandings Reassessed and the Consequences for Ontologies 4. Language and Audiences 5. Philosophical Implications Epilogue Glossary of Key Chinese Terms and Names Bibliography Index

This study traces Greek science through the work of the Pythagoreans, the Presocratic natural philosophers, the Hippocratic writers, Plato, the fourth-century B.C. astronomers, and Aristotle. G. E. R. Lloyd also investigates the relationships between science and philosophy and science and medicine; he discusses the social and economic setting of early Greek science; and he analyzes the motives and incentives of the different groups of writers.