Superstition

For other uses, see Superstition (disambiguation).

and myths, and Plato especially his Allegory of the Cave
Superstition is the belief in supernatural causalitythat and Aristotle both present their work as parts of a search
for truth.
In the classical era, the existence of gods was actively debated both among philosophers and theologians, and opposition to superstition arose consequently. The poem De
rerum natura, written by the Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius further developed the opposition to superstition. Ciceros work De natura deorum also had a great
inuence on the development of the modern concept of
superstition as well as the word itself. Where Cicero distinguished superstitio and religio, Lucretius used only the
term religio. Cicero, for whom superstitio meant excessive fear of the gods wrote that superstitio, non religio,
tollenda est , which means that only superstition, and
not religion, should be abolished.[3] The Roman Empire
also made laws condemning those who excited excessive
religious fear in others.[4]
During the Middle Ages, the idea of Gods inuence on
the worlds events went mostly undisputed. Trials by ordeal were quite frequent, even though Frederick II (1194
1250 AD) was the rst king who explicitly outlawed
trials by ordeal as they were considered irrational.[5]
The rediscovery of lost classical works (The Renaissance)
and scientic advancement led to a steadily increasing
Clay hamsa on a wall, believed to protect the inhabitants of the
disbelief in the Bibles content. This led to studies of bibhouse from harm
lical exegesis, pioneered by Spinoza and to a more skeptical view about superstition. Opposition to superstition
one event causes another without any natural process link- was central to the Age of Enlightenment.[6]
ing the two eventssuch as astrology and certain aspects
linked to religion, like omens, witchcraft and prophecies,
that contradict natural science.[1]

2 Etymology

The word superstition is generally used to refer to the religion not practiced by the majority of a given society
such as Christianity in Western culture regardless of
whether the prevailing religion contains superstitions.[1]
It is also commonly applied to beliefs and practices surrounding luck, prophecy, and certain spiritual beings,
particularly the belief that future events can be foretold
by specic (apparently) unrelated prior events.[2]

The word superstition is rst used in English in the 15th

century, modelled after an earlier French superstition.
The earliest known use as an English noun occurs in Friar
Daws Reply (ca. 1420), where the foure general synnes
are enumerated as Cediciouns, supersticions, e glotouns,
& e proude. The French word, together with its Romance cognates (Italian superstizione, Spanish supersticin, Portuguese superstio, Catalan superstici) continues Latin superstitio.

History of opposition to superstition

While the formation of the Latin word is clear, from the

verb super-stare, to stand over, stand upon; survive, its
original intended sense is less clear. It can be interpreted
Opposition to superstition was rst recorded in Ancient as "standing over a thing in amazement or awe,[7] but
Greece, where philosophers such as Protagoras and the other possibilities have been suggested, e.g. the sense of
Epicureans exhibited agnosticism or aversion to religion excess, i.e. over scrupulousness or over-ceremoniousness
1

SUPERSTITION AND RELIGION

in AD 80 by Domitian.

3 Superstition and religion

See also: Evolutionary psychology of religion and
Evolutionary origin of religions
Greek and Roman polytheists, who modeled their relations with the gods on political and social terms, scorned
the man who constantly trembled with fear at the thought
of the gods, as a slave feared a cruel and capricious master. Such fear of the gods was what the Romans meant
by superstition (Veyne 1987, p. 211).
Diderots Encyclopdie denes superstition as any excess of religion in general, and links it specically with
paganism.[13]
In his Prelude on the Babylonian Captivity of the Church,
Martin Luther (who called the papacy that fountain and
source of all superstitions) accuses the popes of superstition:
Some cultures consider black cats to signify good or bad luck

in the performing of religious rites, or else the survival of

old, irrational religious habits.[8][9]
The earliest known use as a Latin noun occurs in Plautus,
Ennius and later by Pliny, with the meaning of art of divination.[10] From its use in the Classical Latin of Livy
and Ovid (1st century BC), the term is used in the pejorative sense it still holds today, of an excessive fear of
the gods or unreasonable religious belief, as opposed to
religio, the proper, reasonable awe of the gods. Cicero derived the term from superstitiosi, lit. those who are left
over, i.e. survivors, descendants, connecting it with
excessive anxiety of parents in hoping that their children
would survive them to perform their necessary funerary
rites.[11] While Cicero distinguishes between religio and
superstitio, Lucretius uses only the term religio[12] (only
with pejorative meaning). Throughout all of his work, he
only distinguished between ratio and religio.
The Latin verb superstare itself is comparatively young,
being perhaps not ante-Augustan", rst found in Livy,
and the meaning to survive is even younger, found in
late or ecclesiastical Latin, for the rst time in Ennodius.
The use of the noun by Cicero and Horace thus predates
the rst attestation of the verb. It doesn't exclude that the
verb might have been created and used after the name.
The term superstitio, or superstitio vana vain superstition, was applied in the 1st century to those religious
cults in the Roman Empire which were ocially outlawed. This concerned the religion of the druids in particular, which was described as a superstitio vana by Tacitus,
and Early Christianity, outlawed as a superstitio Iudaica

For there was scarce another of the celebrated bishoprics that had so few learned pontis; only in violence, intrigue, and superstition has it hitherto surpassed the rest. For the
men who occupied the Roman See a thousand
years ago dier so vastly from those who have
since come into power, that one is compelled
to refuse the name of Roman ponti either to
the former or to the latter.[14]

The current Catechism of the Catholic Church considers

superstition sinful in the sense that it denotes a perverse
excess of religion, as a demonstrated lack of trust in
divine providence ( 2110), and a violation of the rst
of the Ten Commandments. The Catechism is a defense
against the accusation that Catholic doctrine is superstitious:

Superstition is a deviation of religious feeling and of the practices this feeling imposes. It
can even aect the worship we oer the true
God, e.g., when one attributes an importance
in some way magical to certain practices otherwise lawful or necessary. To attribute the ecacy of prayers or of sacramental signs to their
mere external performance, apart from the interior dispositions that they demand is to fall
into superstition. Cf. Matthew 23:1622 (
2111)

Superstition and folklore

Main article: Folk religion

As discussed above, there is little distinction between superstition and religion. What is fully accepted as genuine
religious statement may be seen as poor superstition by
those who do not share the same faith. Since there are no
generally agreed proper or accepted religious standards
among people of dierent cultural backgrounds, the very
notion of what is a superstitious behavior is relative to
local culture. In this sense, Christian theology will interpret African cults as pure superstition while an evangelical Christian will see as meaningless the Catholic ritual
of crossing oneself (the Sign of the cross) when going by
a church. With the development of folklore studies in
the late 18th century, use of the derogatory term superstition was sometimes replaced by the neutral term folk
belief, an attempt to go over local cultural biases. Both
terms remain in use; thus, describing a practice such as
the crossing ngers to nullify a promise as folk belief
implies a neutral description from the perspective of ethnology or folklore studies, while calling the same thing a
superstition implies its rejection as irrational.

Superstition and psychology

10,000 times without reinforcement when they had originally been conditioned on an intermittent reinforcement
basis.[17] Compared to the other reinforcement schedules (e.g., xed ratio, xed interval), these behaviours
were also the most resistant to extinction.[17] This is called
the partial reinforcement eect, and this has been used to
explain superstitious behaviour in humans. To be more
precise, this eect means that, whenever an individual
performs an action expecting a reinforcement, and none
seems forthcoming, it actually creates a sense of persistence within the individual.[18] This strongly parallels superstitious behaviour in humans because the individual
feels that, by continuing this action, reinforcement will
happen; or that reinforcement has come at certain times
in the past as a result of this action, although not all the
time, but this may be one of those times.
From a simpler perspective, natural selection will tend
to reinforce a tendency to generate weak associations.
If there is a strong survival advantage to making correct associations, then this will outweigh the negatives of
making many incorrect, superstitious associations.[19]
It has also been argued that there may be connections between OCD and superstition.[20] This may be connected
to hygiene.

6 Superstition and politics

Main articles: Magical thinking, Placebo and Eective Ancient greek historian Polybius in his Histories uses the
term superstition explaining that in Ancient Rome that betheory
lief maintained the cohesion of the Empire, operating as
an instrumentum regni.[21]
In 1948, behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner published
an article in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, in
which he described his pigeons exhibiting what appeared
to be superstitious behaviour. One pigeon was making 7 References
turns in its cage, another would swing its head in a pendulum motion, while others also displayed a variety of [1] Vyse, Stuart A (2000). Believing in Magic: The Psycholother behaviours. Because these behaviors were all done
ogy of Superstition. Oxford, England: Oxford University
Press. pp. 1922. ISBN 978-0-1951-3634-0.
ritualistically in an attempt to receive food from a dispenser, even though the dispenser had already been programmed to release food at set time intervals regardless [2] Vyse, Stuart A (2000). Believing in Magic: The Psychology of Superstition. Oxford, England: Oxford University
of the pigeons actions, Skinner believed that the pigeons
Press. pp. 5, 52. ISBN 978-0-1951-3634-0.
were trying to inuence their feeding schedule by performing these actions. He then extended this as a propo- [3] Il IV libro del De rerum natura"".
sition regarding the nature of superstitious behavior in
humans.[15]
[4] Uso della parola superstitio contro i pagani.
Skinners theory regarding superstition being the nature of the pigeons behaviour has been challenged by
other psychologists such as Staddon and Simmelhag,
who theorised an alternative explanation for the pigeons
behaviour.[16]
Despite challenges to Skinners interpretation of the root
of his pigeons superstitious behaviour, his conception
of the reinforcement schedule has been used to explain
superstitious behaviour in humans. Originally, in Skinners animal research, some pigeons responded up to

[5] Ma l'imperatore svevo fu conservatore o innovatore?".

[6] Wilson, Helen Judy; Reill, Peter Hanns. Encyclopedia of
the Enlightenment. New York: Facts on File. p. 577.
ISBN 0-8160-5335-9. . . . equating all Christian beliefs
except those accessible to unaided reason with superstition
...
[7] orig. a standing still over or by a thing; hence, amazement, wonder, dread, esp. of the divine or supernatural.
Charlton T. Lewis, Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary.

[8] Oxford Latin Dictionary. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. 1982.
[9] Turcan, Robert (1996). The Cults of the Roman Empire.
Nevill, Antonia (trans.). Oxford, England: Blackwell. pp.
1012. ISBN 0-631-20047-9.. Oxford English Dictionary (Second ed.). Oxford, England: Oxford University
Press. 1989. The etymological meaning of L. superstitio
is perhaps standing over a thing in amazement or awe.
Other interpretations of the literal meaning have been proposed, e.g., excess in devotion, over-scrupulousness or
over-ceremoniousness in religion and the survival of old
religious habits in the midst of a new order of things; but
such ideas are foreign to ancient Roman thought.
[10] Manuela Simeoni (2011-09-04). Uso della parola superstitio contro i pagani (in Italian).
[11] Cicero, De Natura Deorum II, 28 (32), quoted in
Wagenvoort, Hendrik (1980). Pietas: selected studies in
Roman religion. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill. p. 236.
ISBN 978-90-04-06195-8.
[12] Lucretius. De rerum natura.
[13] Superstition. Retrieved 1 April 2015.
[14] Luther, Martin (1915). The Babylonian Captivity The
Sacrament of Extreme Unction. In Jacobs, Henry Eyster;
Spaeth, Adolph. Works of Martin Luther: With Instructions and Notes 2. Translated by Steinhaeuser, Albert T.
W. Philadelphia: A. J. Holman Company. p. 291. LCCN
15007839. OCLC 300541097. For there was scarce another of the celebrated bishoprics that had so few learned
pontis; only in violence, intrigue, and superstition has it
hitherto surpassed the rest. For the men who occupied
the Roman See a thousand years ago dier so vastly from
those who have since come into power, that one is compelled to refuse the name of Roman ponti either to the
former or to the latter.
[15] Skinner, B. F. (1948). "'Superstition' in the Pigeon.
Journal of Experimental Psychology 38 (2): 168172.
doi:10.1037/h0055873. PMID 18913665.
[16] Staddon, J. E. & Simmelhag, V. L. (1971). The 'supersitition' experiment: A reexamination of its implications
for the principles of adaptive behaviour. Psychological
Review 78 (1): 343. doi:10.1037/h0030305.
[17] Schultz & Schultz (2004, 238).
[18] Carver, Charles S. and Scheier, Michael (2004).
Perspectives on personality. Allyn and Bacon. p. 332.
ISBN 978-0-205-37576-9.
[19] Foster, Kevin R. and Kokko, Hanna (2009). The evolution of superstitious and superstition-like behaviour.
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
276 (1654): 317. doi:10.1098/rspb.2008.0981. PMC
2615824. PMID 18782752.
[20] de Silva, Padmal and Rachman, Stanley (2004) Obsessivecompulsive Disorder, Oxford University Press, p. 34,
ISBN 0198520824.
[21] Guy, Josephine M. (2007) The Complete Works of Oscar
Wilde, Oxford University Press, Volume IV, p. 337, ISBN
0191568449.

EXTERNAL LINKS

8 External links
Where Superstitions Come From: slideshow by Life
magazine

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