NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/sci/anthropo/1405

Internet Message Format | 1992-11-17 | 4.6 KB

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From: [e-mail] (Dave Rindos)
Newsgroups: sci.anthropology
Subject: Re: Ethnobiological Classification
Date: 17 Nov 1992 07:26:48 +0800
Organization: The University of Western Australia
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Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
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[e-mail] (Gil Hardwick) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
> > His views resemble those of Rosch, a psychologist who was once married to
> > an anthropologist.  The major points are that the structure in the world is
> > "picked up" by the perceiver, to a large extent independently of culture,
> > because (switching to Rosch's terms) categories at the basic level (or
> > generic rank) maximixe within category similarity and between category
> > distinctions.  This is interesting reading for addressing the issue of
> > the interface between culture and structurally driven perception (by
> > that I mean perception which is so influenced by the structure in the
> > world that it is similar across cultures.)

>One of the many difficulties I have with this model is its apparent
>assumption that humans universally categorise entities a priori, where
>in Aboriginal Australia there is no attempt at categorisation at all,
>and entities are very much given a back seat to relationships. That is,
>there is no record of "within category similarity and between category
>distinctions" here, but rather since Aboriginal entites are broken down
>into their constituent behaviours their common perception of layers of
>"among behaviouristic relationships" is mapped onto a continental grid
>process referred to as The Dreaming.

I think you are getting overly subtle about a simple, but very important
observation.   Folk Taxonomy (the study of naming systems) has pretty
well demonstrated that people all over the world *perceive* and *name*
organisms in the same manner.  The taxa of folk naming systems are
easily mapped upon the biological classification systems we use in
biology.  This is true not only at the species level but at higher
levels as well (genus, family, and higher levels).

Why should this occur?  The only feasable candidate is that all humans
perceive (at least in terms of the observations applied -- the problem
of "worms") the Natural Order that exists in the world.  In biology, of
course, this natural order is a consequence of descent with
modification.  Hence, plants and animals appear similiar, to a large
extent, because of a shared evolutionary history.  Humans take this
"external" data and use it to form the basis for their naming systems and
classification systems.  In other words, there IS an external order
which is merely being reflected in human constructs about the world.  A
classic story here involves some birds (in New Guinea, as I recall).
Science had treated the birds as one species.  The locals recognized two
species taxa (based, as I recall, on habitat differences).  The locals
were right: allopatric species of similar morphologies were in fact
involved.

Note in saying this, I am NOT claiming that the various cultures need
"significate" the taxa in the same manner -- the point (I think :{)  )
of what Gil was referring to above.  The "meaning" of the various taxa
a very likely to differ.  A clear example from our own cultural history
would be the "Doctrine of Signs".  This held that god made the various
medicianal plants in such a manner that each were marked to show how
they would be useful as medicine, etc.  Hence, "liverworts" or
"lungwort".  This is a different matter.

Or maybe not.  If we begin with the observation taken from Folk Taxonomy
(that there is a "real" Natural Order which is reflected in naming
systems -- a natural order that is *external* and *independent* of
humans) we are led to another hypothesis.  The "rules" of relationships
and "meaning" are equally a form of natural order.  A process governs
the way these are created in the social realm. And this process is quite
as independent of the cultural actors as biological evolution itself.
This process would govern any "signification" in which a culture might
indulge.

This, of course, leads us to appreciate that there would be "better" and
"worse" ways of describing these cultural processes.  The external,
objective process would stand as the "reality" against which any
given description of it could be judged.  But this is merely justifying
the notion that a science of culture is possible.

Dave