Editing Animism (section)

=== Edward Tylor's definition ===

[[File:Edward Burnett Tylor.jpg|thumb|[[Edward Tylor]] developed animism as an anthropological theory.]]
The idea of animism was developed by [[anthropology|anthropologist]] Sir [[Edward Burnett Tylor|Edward Tylor]] through his 1871 book ''[[Primitive culture|Primitive Culture]]'',{{sfn|EB|1878}} in which he defined it as "the general doctrine of souls and other spiritual beings in general". According to Tylor, animism often includes "an idea of pervading life and will in nature;"<ref>{{cite book|first=Edward Burnett |last=Tylor |author-link=Edward Burnett Tylor |title=Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Art, and Custom |volume=1 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AucLAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA260 |year=1871 |publisher=J. Murray |page=260}}</ref> a belief that natural objects other than humans have souls. This formulation was little different from that proposed by [[Auguste Comte]] as "[[fetishism]]",<ref name="Kuper 2005 85">{{cite book |last=Kuper |first=Adam |url=https://archive.org/details/reinventionprimi00kupe |title=Reinvention of Primitive Society: Transformations of a Myth |publisher=[[Routledge]] |year=2005 |edition=2nd |location=Florence, KY, US |page=[https://archive.org/details/reinventionprimi00kupe/page/n97 85] |url-access=limited}}</ref> but the terms now have distinct meanings.

For Tylor, animism represented the earliest form of religion, being situated within an evolutionary framework of religion that has developed in stages and which will ultimately lead to humanity rejecting religion altogether in favor of scientific rationality.{{sfn|Harvey|2005|p=6}} Thus, for Tylor, animism was fundamentally seen as a mistake, a basic error from which all religions grew.{{sfn|Harvey|2005|p=6}} He did not believe that animism was inherently illogical, but he suggested that it arose from early humans' dreams and visions and thus was a rational system. However, it was based on erroneous, unscientific observations about the nature of reality.{{sfn|Harvey|2005|p=8}} Stringer notes that his reading of ''Primitive Culture'' led him to believe that Tylor was far more sympathetic in regard to "primitive" populations than many of his contemporaries and that Tylor expressed no belief that there was any difference between the intellectual capabilities of "savage" people and Westerners.<ref name=stringer/>

The idea that there had once been "one universal form of primitive religion" (whether labelled ''animism'', ''totemism'', or ''shamanism'') has been dismissed as "unsophisticated" and "erroneous" by archaeologist [[Timothy Insoll]], who stated that "it removes complexity, a precondition of religion now, in ''all'' its variants."{{sfn|Insoll|2004|p=29}}