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

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 372 pages
• Published by: Cambridge University Press January 29, 1993
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0521438713
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0521438711
• Book Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Weighs: 1.2 pounds

Product Review
"Atran has produced a work of substantial scholarshipthe 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 produced a work of substantial scholarshipthe 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

"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

Product Description
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.

Reader Reviews
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.]