Cultural Themes and Epistemology:

Tribal-Traditional and Euro-American Cultures

The following materials are key presentation points developed by the instructor during class lectures. They are not a substitute for student participation in the class lectures, but a highlighting of the pertinent items considered.

Cultural Themes:  How have various peoples come to know and define their worlds?   Our focus here will be on issues of  epistemology, and two predominate cultural themes or orientations, that make of the human cultural stories.

For our purposes, in order to better appreciate some of these cultures, we will focus on epistemology and three basic types of knowing the world.  They are "literal," "metaphoric," and "anagogic."  Each is to be understood as complementary to and not exclusive of the others, i.e., each is a "legitimate" path to knowledge.  Each of us typically rely upon all three ways of knowing, though often emphasizing one mode over the others

How a people have come to know the world, in turn, influences a people view of that world, their ontology.  While some cultures see themselves as a part of the world around them, others view themselves as fundamentally separate from a world "out there."  In turn, knowledge may be either intuitively "received" from "agents" emanating in the world or empirically "discovered" thorough a rigorous application of human logic. As a result the significance and meaning of a "flower," a "rainbow" or for that matter, "reality" itself can differ radically and completely.

Because of its elemental importance, such epistemological differences will also resonate throughout and manifest themselves in each of the various topics considered during this course - origins (evolution and creation), aesthetics and religion, social organization (power and ethics), life-cycle, ecology and economics (gatherer and hunter, and domestication of plants/animals and farming), prejudice and war, and cultural and biological change.

Ways of Knowing:

Each way of knowing is understood as complementary to the others, and none are somehow "superior" or "true" compared to the others. No one criteria, in and of itself, is more appropriate or morally superior than another. Each category has validity, equally contributing to the human condition, although in differing ways. This is not a developmental sequence through which an individual progresses from one stage to the next.  All three ways of knowing are implicit in "Traditional" and "Euro-American" cultures, though each culture has its particular emphasis.

• Literal-denotative ways of knowing are based on the physical senses and have explicit, literal meanings. The types of senses on which these ways of knowing are based are those overtly acknowledged as viable and generally shared among a given group, e.g., sight and sound. This way of knowing is understood to be grounded on and have legitimacy because of something that has a reality in the experiential world. Literal ways of knowing revolving around the concrete, explicit, and reliance on the senses.

Let me offer two examples of literal-denotative statements that focus on "wilderness." "Wilderness is made up of a given number and type of trees, animals, plants, in a specified physical terrain." As referred to in the Old Testament, wilderness is a "desert" and "waste," a "cursed" land, full of "thorns and thistles." In both instances, the value statements are based on literal meanings, accessible through the senses. You can touch the trees and feel the thorns. The words descriptive of "wilderness" attempt to elicit precise, literal representations. The word "tree" has a more or less precise physical counterpart in the "wilderness." Empiricism and religious fundamentalism, for example, are associated with literal-denotative ways of knowing.

• Metaphoric-connotative ways of knowing are those based on mental conceptualization and have implicit, metaphoric meanings. These ways of knowing can range from the logically oriented, i.e., based on a consensus of shared rules for thinking, to the irrationally focused, i.e., formed without a consensus of shared rules for thinking and based upon fallacious assumptions. They are often predicated on and are legitimized because of a deduction from or a comparison to other values. They are not dependent upon being grounded in the experiential world. Metaphoric-connotative value statements offer more figurative and abstract images, often images of qualities, and are much less literal in their representations.  Metaphoric ways of knowing involves the allegorical, symbolic, and reliance on the mental faculties.

Let me illustrate this type of knowing with three different examples. "Wilderness is the antithesis of civilization." "Wilderness is a land of no use." "Wilderness is where the birds fly free and the beauty of the flowers glows with the colors of the rainbow." These particular wilderness value statements are deduced from and implicitly compared with other already held values, i.e., values of societal civilization, economic use and aesthetic beauty. They have little direct and no literal counterpart in an experiential "wilderness," but refer to images of abstract qualities. Rationalism, literary criticism and racial prejudice, for example, are all founded on metaphoric-connotative ways of knowing.

• Anagogic-implicative ways of knowing are those which are derived from intuitive or mystical experiences and have implicit, metaphoric meanings. It is often the meaning of the "essence" within something overt and material, the "inner forms." While emanating out of and legitimized by an experience, unlike literal-denotative ways of knowing, that experience is much more private and contemplative in nature, e.g., divine revelation, and not contingent upon certain senses that are generally shared by all in the community. Although this is not to suggest that in any given community all members could not have access to such an experience. Similar to metaphoric-connotative ways of knowing, anagogic-implicative epistemological statements offer figurative, abstract images, and meanings. But these are images that are normally hidden from humanity and often esoteric in nature, e.g., the image of an animal's soul.

An example of an anagogic-implicative statement would be, "Wilderness is where God and all true wisdom are to be found." Another example would be, "The image in the stone is that of the seal, revealed through the stone by the seal to the stone carver as he sat in the great solitudes." Both statements offer figurative meanings, i.e., images of God and of a seal-spirit, and are derived from a mystical or intuitive ways of knowing. Anagogic-implicative ways of knowing are not dependent upon empirical or logical processes. Artistic and religious inspiration, for example, are associated with anagogic-implicative ways of knowing.

Tribal-Traditional Cultural Themes (an illustration of Looking Glass World View): - The examples of Inuit Sedna (spatial), Balinese Tika (temporal), Dogon "Seed" (spatial), and Mardu Manguny or Aranda Alcheringa (Dreamtime) (expressive of both spatial and temporal dimensions).  For an expanded discussion of these world view themes, see Looking Glass World View.

Culture and ontology:

1. Connectedness (subjectification)- All of reality, both in its spatial and temporal dimensions, is ultimately expressed by its unity and wholism, and in terms of "kinship and family."  Humanity exists a part of the universe, humanity mirroring the cosmos, the interior mirroring the external.
   • Implications for a "history" - Do traditional peoples have a concept of "history" or "progress"? And what is the meaning of, "history means disrespect for the ancestors"?
   • Implications for the concept of "self" - Do traditional peoples have the social construct, "individual"?
   • Traditional peoples live in a non-dualistic world, a world that does not differentiate between the material world of nature and the ideational world of "self."
2. Equality of Beings/Elements (equalization) - All "peoples," be they human, animal, plant or rock, share in a fundamental equality with one another.
3. Meaning and Archetypes (qualitation) - The world emanates with a priori significances and universal archetypal patterns, as long as you are attentive.
4. Life-force (qualitation) - An animating power, omnipresent and pervasive, inundates the world.
5. Transcendent - Spiritual World (transcendentation) - Ultimate reality is expressed in its transcendent spirituality.  Example of Plato's Cave

   Traditional peoples acknowledge the physical world, and are a pragmatic people, but they vest more importance in the transcendent.

6. Participation and "Replication of the World" (participation and replication) - The essential key.  In the example of the Balinese Eka Dasa Rudra

   As the transcendent archetypes permeate all reality, including the world of nature and the human self, i.e., the "outer" and "inner" worlds, the macrocosm and microcosm, then necessarily, as humans interact with the world, they contribute to the perpetuation and bringing forth of the creation.   The human, as a participant of the world, is in this sense a co-creator of the world. "Man seeks to mirror the cosmos."

   As humans seek to find meaning, they attempt to replicate the meaning of the original archetypes, and, in so doing, gain access to meaning and the life-force.  In turn, the vary existence of the world is perpetuated.  Or re-phrased: "Reality" is that transitory moment of intersection of those participating, imbued with meaningful archetypes and life-force. 

Epistemology Emphasis:

• Intuitive
• Visionary rite of passage
• Metaphoric
• Anagogic

Euro-American Cultural Themes (an illustration of Glass Pane World View):  - The example of Pythagoras and his Theorem, and the Scientific Method.  For an expanded introduction to Euro-American world view themes, see Glass Pane World View and Emerging Euro- American Values.   Juxtaposing the Two Cultural Values and Worlds.

Culture and ontology:

1. Objectification - Cartesian Dualism - an autonomous world has a material existence "out there," as "objects," separate from my thoughts of it.  Humanity exists apart from the universe, as if separated by a "great glass pane."   "History" and the "individual" come into existence.
2. Gradation - Hierarchical dominant-subordinate relationships.  Take dominion over the earth and subdue it.
3. Quantitation - "The language of nature is mathematics."
4. Secularization - A world devoid of spirit.
5. Progression - Lineal time, with a past necessarily inferior to a future what will be superior.
6. Reduction - There is one "true" reality and that reality has its existence ultimately only in its material, quantitative forms.  What is "real" is what you can touch.  Commodification comes into existence, i.e., the significance of an object or act is reducible to its market value, i.e., capitalism.

Epistemology Emphasis:

• Empiricism
• Rationalism
• Literal
• Metaphoric

Language and Culture - Consider the relationship of how our languages are structured and how we view the world around us as developed in the "Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis" and as illustrated in the examples of English, Navajo, Hopi and Trobriand languages.  The theory holds that we act not so much on what we directly sense in nature but how we conceive of nature as mediated by our languages.  The theory holds two key doctrines:

• Doctrine of "linguistic determinism" - "we dissect nature along lines laid down by our native language."  Nature is made meaningful not via its own patterns but via the patterns of our language.
• Doctrine of "linguistic relativity" - As each language is distinct, unique onto itself, nature is thus conceived of differently, relative to each language.

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