NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/sci/anthropo/1426

Internet Message Format | 1992-11-19 | 1.8 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!munnari.oz.au!uniwa!uniwa!nfm
From: [e-mail] (Dave Rindos)
Newsgroups: sci.anthropology
Subject: Re: Ethnobiological Classification
Date: 20 Nov 1992 08:28:51 +0800
Organization: The University of Western Australia
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[e-mail] (Gil Hardwick) writes (in response to me):

>I spent the first twenty five years of my life in the Australian bush,
>and I have never experienced any "Natural Order" to it, beyond its
>general compliance with the Physical Laws.
Thank you.  We are in agreement, then.  If nature's order is governed by
Law (e.g descent with modification), and if cultural names for taxa are
arrived at by means of a natural process (the induction to be made from
Folk Taxonomy), then we would expect that culture, too, is a law-like
process.  Hence, the names for taxa in ALL systems reflect nature
because nature itself is governed by laws and because people are capable
of seeing the reflection of these laws in the patterns observed.

> > 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.

>I finally decided myself that no *objective* science of culture is
>possible.

If an objective science of culture *is*, in fact, possible (which is
merely to say that Cultural processes occur in a law-like manner), then
this will remain true irrespective of your, or anybody else's, "decisions"
on the matter.  Opinions, no matter how firmly held, provide poor guidance.

Dave