From: gil@Gilsys.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick)
Newsgroups: sci.anthropology
Subject: Ethnobiological Classification
Distribution: world
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 92 07:09:18 GMT
Organization: STAFF STRATEGIES - Anthropologists & Training Agents


In article <1ehbg4INNou@uniwa.uwa.edu.au> arkdr@uniwa.uwa.edu.au writes:

 > >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.

Look, Dave, we are plainly not in agreement. My clear statement above
concerns the physical Australian bush, not Aboriginal culture, and I am
*not* going to play word games with you such that you feel you can trap
me into a single, extremely petty admission which is in fact empty, from
which you might then proceed to build your own purely abstract construct
in the hope that I will then pursue it with you and provide evidence to
support it as far as you want to take the matter. Sorry, there are far
too many *ifs* to your imagination for my comfort, and I have better
things to do with my life.

Watch my lips: *NOT*!

 > 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.

Whatever might hold true by your criteria of acceptability neither
offers much guidance. The fact is that people *do* make decisions on
whatever matter they deem appropriate from time to time, and defend
them with quite considerable gusto without ever bothering that they
may constitute little more than opinions. Those opinions are what
they have to survive with, substantiated from their own personal
observations and reflections (not at all least on the outcome of
their own actions) and from their many and varied discussions with
other people over their lifetime.

My expectation here is that you will take your own opinions out to
the desert with you and test whether they will enable you to survive
there, before attempting to draw evidence from that environment in
their support. Since you are apparently reluctant to do so I dare
suggest that your academic enterprise represents no more than part
of an ongoing campaign against Christendom which has in fact been
raging within your own "culture" (not mine) for quite a considerable
period of time now sufficient to make it *appear* substantial, none
of which is of any use to us away down here in the Antipodes in any
way whatsoever.

If such universal laws underlying cultural processes exist as you
claim, how is it that so few agree with you; that such bitter conflict
pertains to your assertions? My own direct observations of the progress
of such matters are that as you persist in berating others from your
own premises, as *the only right and true position on what must be so*,
in the end they will simply fire you or have you relocated to another
Department, or in the case of Aboriginal Law just put a spear through
you, so ridding themselves of the matter (until the next fruitcake who
just wants to give everyone a hard time by arguing the pitch and toss
about nothing arrives).

Has it occurred to you that you might simply be *wrong*, or will you
insist that other people just do not understand you yet? Let me put
it to you that the very spoiler to your theory is human intelligence
itself, which plays its word games as often as whimsical and absurd
as yours, and in doing so (thank heaven) builds itself a culture to
suit its own particular niche in life regardless of the absurd whimsy
pursued in turn by whoever lives next door.

--
Gil Hardwick                                      gil@Gilsys.DIALix.oz.au
Independent Consulting Ethnologist                            3:690/660.6
PERTH, Western Australia                                 (+61 9) 399 2401
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