Both dealt with conceptions of 'science' which do not agree on first sight with our standard view of natural science. In his careful reconstruction of Fulani beliefs about Malaria and other diseases, Andy discovered that these are not isolated folk-beliefs, that they are not merely consistent with one another, but that they are guided by general principles which organize and interpret particular empirical knowledge in a systematic fashion and relate it to more general cultural values. If one fails to recognize the scientific character of these beliefs, Andy argues, one fails to engage the Fulani, and this failure makes it so much more difficult for their acceptance of Western treatment methods. Andy's reconstruction recognizes four levels at which knowledge is organized. He arrives at these levels by following the example of phenomenologists like Edmund Husserl or Maurice Merleau-Ponty who reconstruct collective representations of 'body,' 'space,' or 'time' from ordinary discourse, linguistic structures, and the representation of elementary personal experience within these linguistic structures.
Origin stories tell how people see themselves.
They provide the most general level for the organization of knowledge, namely a sense of identity. Such master schemas further concretize the Fulani conviction that their body is particularly susceptible to disease in the wetness of the lowland which they now inhabit. Indeed, susceptibility to disease marks a true Fulani, since a true Fulani body remembers the dry highland from which it hails. We are thus moving from master schemas to the particular schemas for a disease like Malaria. The schemas deal with specific causes and most suitable treatments of the disease.