From: gil@Gilsys.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick)
Newsgroups: sci.anthropology
Subject: Ethnobiological Classification
Distribution: world
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 92 09:42:34 GMT
Organization: STAFF STRATEGIES - Anthropologists & Training Agents


In article <1e9anoINN3bh@uniwa.uwa.edu.au> arkdr@uniwa.uwa.edu.au writes:

 > 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).  

Not at all subtle. Folk Taxonomy, Ethnobiology, and whatever, are written
up for academics in English or one of the European languages. Nowhere as
any of this work been done in any Australian Aboriginal language for the
benefit of Aboriginal people, and I do strongly suggest that whatever it
is being mapped has already been filtered by the mind of whoever is doing
the research to their own ends.

 > 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. 

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. I am not at all suggesting
that it is particularly hostile either, only that it is indifferent as
each species strives to survive the constant competitive stress from
something else. My own test of your hypothesis is of whether it is of
sufficient reliability to enable you to survive there youself. Your
world-view collapses, and you die. That is the "rule", what we call
The Law.

Such death is a traditional punishment, in fact, invoked by singing
the victim often accompanied by bone pointing, and so on. The death is
guaranteed to come with two or three days, unless as today a doctor
intervenes and maintains the victim on a life-support system until an
elder can be brought in to the hospital to sit at the bedside and sing
them back again.

Your model does not address other phenomena either, of how people are
able to communicate by telepathy over hundreds of miles, and have
apparently isolated third parties on meeting the next day comment
unprompted upon what the second party far distant had to say. The
Dreaming, if perhaps not satisfying European scientific standards,
nevertheless does very accurately indeed map the lines of communication
taken, and where the third parties might have tuned into them to pick
up any given exchange. What would be useful at all about classifying
anything into categories, in that environment? Why would anyone even
bother with any sort of taxonomy at all, prior to running into the
newly arrived Europeans stumbling around dying from hunger and thirst,
and having to find some new way of communicating sensibly with them?

Whatever else you might be discussing, again, is filtered through
your own mind perhaps long before under its control you typed its
representation into your computer for transmission to me. Whoever
did the New Guinea work to whom the locals pointed out differences,
was also being addressed by them in some common terms which do not
necessarily reflect their own view of the world, especially given
a history of contact sufficient for them to have already negotiated
the basis on which communication might have taken place between the
different humans involved in the transaction, each one fully capable
of independent perception of the physical objects they wished to
address.

 > 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.

The "rules" pertain to the process of survival itself, of the hypostasis
involved with the satisfaction of whatever needs are required to be met
in maintaining the life of each individual. Successful adaption pertains
to the next generation, not this one, doesn't it?

I may be inadequate in that point, I am not into evolutionary theory.

 > 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. But that does not mean that we are incapable of knowing what
is going on in the world to enable a very high standard of survival
indeed.

What I find interesting with respect to this hypothesis, however, with
no offence intended, is how dependent academics are on the artificial
support provided by the surplus (?) production of other people, such
that they never need to test their theories against the reality of
personal survival as others do.

--
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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