How animals and intellectuals think
Evolution and Epistemology
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Preface
O Star, the fairest one in sight,
We grant your loftiness the right
To some obscurity of cloud.
It will not do to say of night,
Since dark is what brings out your light.
Some mystery becomes the proud,
But to be wholly taciturn in your reserve
Is not allowed.
Say something. And it says, "I burn."
But say with what degree of heat.
Talk Fahrenheit. Talk Centigrade.
Use language we can comprehend.
Tell us what elements you blend.
It gives us strangely little aid,
but does tell something in the end.
And steadfast as Keats' eremite,
Not stooping from its sphere,
It asks a little of us here.
It asks of us a certain height,
So when at times the mob is swayed
To carry praise or blame too far,
We may chose something like a star
To stay our minds on, and be staid.
This poem of Robert Frost is the only one I have ever memorized. In part I remember the poem because as an adolescent I sang it in a choral arrangement by Randall Thompson. But in part I remember it because of the consolation I found in the last lines: "so when at times the mob is swayed to carry praise or blame too far, we may choose something like a star to stay our minds on and be staid." As a child and teenager I was often the target of exaggerrated praise and insult -- praise because I was usually the best student in the classroom, and insult because I was effeminate. To evaluate myself I needed some other criterion, beyond the fragile and superficial opinions of the mob. My religious background (liberal Lutheran) guaranteed that the search for this criterion (Frost's star) would be individual and internal -- years of Sunday
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School in which we were trained to think through moral dilemnas, one by one, and without rules, and then a rather dense catachism (given by a university philosophy professor) heavy with ideas from Kierkegaard and Bonhoffer, and that provoked existential crises in many children. We were taught to distrust rigid moral rules, and the opinions of others, and were bombarded with examples of how an entire society (especially Nazi Germany) could agree about terrible ideas. To reason morally one had to go back to basics, question the idea of God, question ideas like "liberty" or "democracy" (and the Vietnam war propaganda), question the very meaning of the universe and of life.
With a few readings of Emerson and Thoreau I passed through a short phase in which I believed in the primacy of concepts like "beauty" or "goodness", and memorized sayings like "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" in order to guide my thoughts. But soon I lost confidence in these principles, and in the use of aphorisms as a "guiding star."
After finishing High School, I went off to New York where I studied French literature and philosophy, spending my junior year in Paris. The praises and insults were more moderate in the great metropolises than in the rural area where I grew up, and I began to like being a more normal person. As to criteria that might serve as guiding stars, I couldn't find much, although perhaps I did learn to accept others' opinions a little more. Mostly, I simply went through a rather prolonged existential crisis. I finished my undergraduate years without much conviction, but I did enjoy a course in historical linguistics. It seemed to provide criteria more objective than the typically loose opinions of literature and philosophy professors for evaluating ideas. So I decided to try a master's degree in linguistics.
Although I had registered for a master's in linguistics, I never actually took courses in the area. On registration day one of the professors informed me I would have to learn Latin and Sanskrit. If I preferred living languages like Navaho or Basque, he suggested, I would be better off in anthropology. So I signed up for anthropology courses and ended up getting my master's and doctoral degrees in this area.
Although I had taken anthropology and sociology courses as an undergraduate, it was only in my first graduate courses that I was really exposed to what for me was a new way of thinking -- and which I later discovered had the name (given by its critics of course) of "positivism." I was delighted. Throughout my master studies I was surrounded by professors and students who followed similar theoretical principles, and I felt very much at home. Later, when I returned to more "typical" anthropologists in my doctoral studies, I became part of the "opposition", a position I still retain.
This book grew out of a need to explain, justify and defend myself in relationship to other social scientists. Throughout my years as doctoral student
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and professor, I have slowly realized that the differences that separate my thinking from that of my colleagues are deep. The short discussions in professional meetings and in the methodological parts of papers are simply not enough to clarify these differences. I hope that this work will at least bring these discussions to a richer and more productive level.
I am not equipped to provide a thorough review of the different literatures consulted -- philosophy of science, cognitive ethology, cognitive psychology, etc. My aim is "simply" to clarify my own positions with regard to anthropology, and other social sciences and their roles in academia and society. In particular I want to defend the idea that it is possible to "decontextualize" certain aspects of society and compare them with similar aspects of other cultures. In order to do this I needed to contrast my position with the positions of others, as I see them. Undoubtedly, I have often misunderstood my opponents. It is probably impossible to be totally fair. To fully understand someone means having the same ideas as they. We are always dealing with interpretations of others' views and not with exact representations.
The reader will certainly recognize some general limitations with regard to my misinterpretations. I make finer distinctions among theoretical lines closer to my own, and tend to group together more distant theoretical views. Perhaps this is a general human tendency. The poor, for example, make many finer distinctions among categories of "poor" ("criminals" "bums," "honest workers," "skilled workers" etc.). The rich make fine distinctions among categories of wealth, and tend to group the poor together. This more general human limitation is perhaps not too harmful, but in the case of intellectual works we often run the danger of setting up straw men to tear down. In the end, my intention is to speak about ideas and not about people, and I beg forgiveness if I have misunderstood the ideas or positions of some deceased or living colleague.
I wrote this work during the summer (December through March) of 1993-94, as part of a concurso for a promotion at the Federal University of Santa Catarina. I thank the university for giving me this incentive to finally express my ideas and feelings about anthropology and academia. I took advantage of my first months of a sabbatical year from September 1994 to 1995 at the Institut für Humanbiologie, Universität Hamburg, to modify the text and translate it into English. I thank the Institut for graciously receiving me during this period, and CNPq, the Brazilian Research Foundation, for giving me a grant to supplement my income in this expensive city.