Cognitive Foundations of Natural History: Towards an Anthropology of Science (Msh) [Paperback]

Scott Atran (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0521438713 | ISBN-13: 978-0521438711 | Publication Date: January 29, 1993

What is it about human nature that makes our species capable of thinking scientifically? Inspired by a debate between Noam Chomsky and Jean Piaget, Scott Atran traces the development of natural history from Aristotle to Darwin, and demonstrates how the science of plants and animals has emerged from the common conceptions of folkbiology. The author proceeds not only from the more traditional philosophical, historical or sociological perspectives, but from a point of view he considers more basic and necessary to all of these: that of cognition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Atran has produced a work of substantial scholarship...the wealth of information the book contains and the fresh perspectives it offers make it invaluable. Cognitive Foundations of Natural History will influence the conceptual and historical study of systematics for some time to come." Forest & Conservation History 37

"This is a book that is deliberately designed to put the cat among the pigeons, philosophically, psychologically, anthropologically, and sociologically speaking....In short, this is an extraordinary, formidable, interdisciplinary tour de force that none will entirely agree with, that many will regard as profoundly wrongheaded, but that all can learn from if they make the effort." ISIS

"...a provocative as well as a deeply investigated study." Choice

"...traces in great detail the historical and philosophical origins of taxonomic nomenclature, from traditional folk taxonomy through Aristotle and Linnaeus to the nineteenth century biologists who established the familiar present-day system....the ideas expressed are provocative and represent a significant contribution to the study of ethnotaxonomy." Journal of Ethnobiology

"Only Atran could have written a book that combines deep understanding of anthropology, biological systematics, the history of science, and philosophy. The result is a book that contains more substance per page than any book I have read in a generation." David L. Hull, Northwestern University

"Drawing upon a wealth of anthropological, psychological, philosophical, and historical evidence, Atran weaves together a series of powerful, often controversial arguments: that everyday conceptions of folk biology are remarkably similar across cultures, that they are fundamentally domain-specific, and that they set the foundations for scientific thought." Susan A. Gelman, University of Michigan

"Perhaps Atran's most far-reaching argument is grounded in his critique of `prototype theory,' propounded by cognitive psychologists as the basis for categorization of all natural objects. Again he demonstrates that different types of cognitive processes are involved when people conceptually order living things versus, say, furniture or artifacts." Terence E. Hays, American Anthropologist

"Atran has surely presented a masterful, if densely packed, study in support of his thesis....This significant book, while anything but light reading, deserves the serious attention of scientist and philosopher alike." Laura Landen, Review of Metaphysics

Book Description

Inspired by a debate between Noam Chomsky and Jean Piaget, this work traces the development of natural history from Aristotle to Darwin, and demonstrates how the science of plants and animals has emerged from the common conceptions of folkbiology.

Product Details

• Paperback: 376 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (January 29, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521438713
• ISBN-13: 978-0521438711
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #920,344 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Scott Atran is a director of research in anthropology at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris, France. He is also a research associate and visiting professor in psychology and public policy at the University of Michigan, a Presidential Scholar in Sociology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and cofounder of ARTIS Research and Risk Modeling. His books include In God We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Exceptional scholarship in the history and theory of science, July 5, 2001

By 

R. J. O'Hara - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cognitive Foundations of Natural History: Towards an Anthropology of Science (Msh) (Paperback)

The term "natural history" has a variety of meanings today. Most often it is used to distinguish the popular study of nature from its technical and experimental study, the latter being given the name "biology." But "natural history" has itself a technical sense, one that is still used, although not as widely as it has been in the past. Technical natural history is the study of the diversity and history of nature: the distribution of animals and plants through space and time, the course of evolution, and the history of the earth. The core of technical natural history is systematics, the study of the "kinds" of animals and plants, and it is the conceptual development of systematics that is the subject of this exceptional, scholarly work.

Atran approaches systematics as an anthropologist specializing in the study of folk classification -- the ways in which different cultures categorize the diversity of life. Against historians and philosophers who have claimed that common sense understandings of the world obstructed the growth of science, Atran argues that folk-taxonomic common sense was the framework within which the science of systematics developed. Further, it is only by trying to solve the problems posed by common sense that science gradually disengages itself from common sense and stands on its own.

After surveying the folk-taxonomic literature and the principles of cognitive anthropology, Atran turns to the often-misunderstood zoological works of Aristotle. Aristotle, Atran argues, did not use the methods of formal logic to classify unknowns, but rather to characterize more precisely the animal kinds already recognized by Greek vernacular culture. Unlike Aristotle, who had to deal only with a local fauna of limited diversity, the Renaissance herbalists of northern Europe at the beginning of the age of exploration were faced with a far greater diversity of natural forms, a diversity that became available for extended study as botanical gardens and herbaria were established. As a consequence, the herbalists differentiated the basic folk notion of a natural kind into two privileged ranks (genus and species), and accorded the genus special conceptual status as a fundamental unit of nature. As knowledge of natural diversity continued to increase, taxonomic ranks proliferated, and Atran argues that families and orders gradually came to be fundamental in the way that genera had been before. Emphasis on these higher-level structures led to the elaboration of comprehensive organizing principles for natural diversity, principles like the great chain of being stretching from monad to man.

Atran concludes his account with the rise of the evolutionary view of nature in the early 1800s. He does not address the deep transformations that are taking place within systematics today, transformations associated with the development of cladistic systematics. It is a testament to the value of Atran's perspective, however, that it was immediately apparent to me how the principal phenomenon he describes -- the gradual disengagement of science from common sense as a result of problems generated within the common sense framework -- is at the root of many contemporary systematic controversies, including the controversy over the rejection of taxonomic rank itself.

Atran has produced a work of substantial scholarship. Readers who are not familiar with any of the subjects covered in this book will find it slow going as the writing is dense in places, and specialists will wish to dispute certain technical points, but the wealth of information the book contains and the fresh perspectives it offers make it invaluable. Cognitive Foundations of Natural History will influence the conceptual and historical study of systematics for some time to come. [Adapted from my review in Forest and Conservation History, 37(1): 42, 1993.]

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Science and Common Sense, December 2, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Cognitive Foundations of Natural History: Towards an Anthropology of Science (Msh) (Paperback)

From Choice -

On one level, this work makes a general argument about the relationship between commonsense thinking and scientific thinking. . . . On another level, the one on which the more general argument is specifically illustrated, this work is an extremely well researched and presented history of 'systematics'--thescience of Western biological classification. This story, of course, has been told before, but never so compellingly and in aid of a provocative thesis that organizes the narrative. . . . Language and the process of representation may not be sufficiently problemized in this work. But in sum, a provocative aswell as a deeply investigated study.

From Ian Hacking - London Review of Books

Cognitive science lies close by Atran's side, guiding his claim that we have an innate capacity for sorting plants and animals. The cognitive revolution, as it is now called, took off from Noam Chomsky's thesis that there is a universal grammar, somehow innate, that makes it possible for infants to catch on to any language spoken round them almost without trying. This idea, once so radical, is now celebrated as fact and as a comprehensive model for the human mind. . . . Atran's thesis about a built-in cognitive skill for sorting the living beings fits nicely into this tradition. But you don't have to recite the cognitivist catechism to gain admission to his book. You can also think heis wrong-headed in his application of the cognitivist programme, and still immensely admire his work.