Summary_of_African_Traditional_Thought_and_Western_Science_by_Robin_Horton

Summary of African Traditional Thought and Western Science by Robin Horton This chapter is about Robin Horton trying to explain African traditional thought using the approach of its similarity’s to western thoughts. He explains that there are two reasons why social anthropologists do not understand African philosophical thoughts. The first reason is most anthropologists are not familiar “with the theoretical thinking of their own culture”. Secondly, those who understand their culture’s theoretical thinking do not see the similarities in African traditional thoughts, because of the difference in idiom that represent the same thing or idea. Therefore, Robin uses similarities in western and African thoughts to help us understand African philosophy better. His approach is to propound some theories on the nature and function of theoretical thinking and show how traditional African religious thinking exhibits these characteristics. This approach is often said to present traditional thoughts as a form of scientific thought. However, he clearly stated that African philosophical thought is not a science and he promised to prove that in other chapters of this paper or book. The first proposition he made is “the quest for explanatory theory is basically the quest for unity underlying apparent diversity; for simplicity underlying apparent complexity; for order underlying apparent disorder; for regularity underlying anomaly.” This simply means theoretical thinking seeks to explain observations by elaborating the forces that operate behind the common-sense observation. These forces form the structure by which the observations are interrupted. In African tradition thoughts, the gods of a given culture form this system by which the world of observations is interpreted. According to Horton these forces that underlie common-sense observation must be of a limited number of kinds and their behavior must be governed by a limited number of general principles. Modern writers believe African religious thinking is not theoretical thinking because the African cosmologies are countless and therefore does not satisfy the basic requirement that governs the entities behind common sense observation. However, Horton found the same flaw is western science, where atoms tend to be innumerable. Since theory is the demonstration of limited kinds of entities and not the numbers of the entities, just as the elements for western science are atoms molecules and waves those of African traditional thoughts are ancestors, heroes and water spirits, using kalabari religious thought as an example. The second proposition he proposed is “Theory places things in a casual context wider than that provided by common sense.” Common sense uses inferences too draw conclusions. And it achieves this by putting an event in a casual context but common sense provides a narrow view of the event. On the other hand, theory uses the underlying forces to explain the event, hence places things in a wider context. For example, common sense will say, bilharzia is cause by drinking untreated water. However western science would say, bilharzia is cause by water snails. The western thoughts reference to theoretical entities is used to link events in the natural to antecedent in that same world. According to Robin Horton African traditional thought uses the supernatural to link an event to the antecedents that occur in the natural. He uses the most common case of search for cause in traditional Africa- the diagnosis of diseases to explain his point. Sick and afflicted people go to consult the diviners as to the cause of their illness. The cause of their sickness usually involves the invention of the gods because of an action or act that breaches the kinship of morality. Therefore, the use of supernatural link connects the action of a man to his sickness. Where the sickness is the event and his action is the antecedent. The third proposition he made is “Common sense and theory have complementary roles in everyday life.” He uses history of theories to explain that theory comes and goes but the world of common sense remains very little change. He gave two reasons for the persistence of common sense. First, all theory, perhaps take their departure from the world of things and people and ultimately return us to it. Secondly, that common sense is handier and more economical than theories. It is only when one needs to a better scope than the limited view of common sense that he uses theory. For example, it is unnecessary for an industrial chemist to use salt according to the atomic theory in the kitchen, because it consumes more time, more money and more energy and produces almost the same result that common sense would, when used to determine the amount of salt to put in the food. However, in the factor common sense is not enough to determine the amount of salt one should add to produce a certain chemical because an accurate amount is need. Any slight difference in the quantity of salt could result in a different chemical. African traditional thought also displays the character of complementary between common sense and theory. An example is when a person is sick he is treated by ordinal people or native doctors, who recognize the disease, using herbal medicine. However when different treatment fails then the gods are consulted for the cause and solution to the sickness. It is only when the common sense observation fail- prescription by native doctors, that theory – consultation of the diviners, is applied. In simple words the proposition means that, theory is used where common sense would fail and common sense is used where theory is not necessary. The fourth proposition is “the level of theory varies with context.” Based on how wide the content a person wants to view and event, the person chooses a low or higher-level theory - one that covers a limited and larger area of experience respectively. The area covered by low-level theory is a small portion of the area covered by the higher level theory. The entities maintain by the low-level theory are seen as special manifestation in higher-level theory. This proposition raises the problem of something being itself at one time and a manifestation of another at the same time. Traditional thought displays the characteristic where there are many spirits but one Supreme Being. The spirits are the entities maintained in the lower-level theory and the Supreme Being is consider under higher-level theory. Therefore, each spirit is a special manifestation of the characteristic of the Supreme Being. This feature is used by chemist in the relation between the homogenous atoms and the planetary system of fundamental particles. The fifth proposition is “All theory breaks up the unitary objects of common sense into aspects, then the places resulting elements in a wider casual context. This is, it first abstracts and analyses, then re-integrates.” This is a feature is seen in science when it breaks up common sense things in order to achieve a casual understanding that surpasses common sense. African thoughts also shows this feature as prove by Fortes in his recent works. According to his works, most western Africa belief system have a multiply belief system. He uses the Tallensi prove that African belief system uses these features. The multiply souls are broken down into three basic spiritual agencies. First is the “segr” control the individual biological entity. This is follow by “nuor” which determine whether a person has a personality trait to become a member of the Tale society. The personality traits are the wishes of the person before he arrives on earth. The third is the yin ancestors which attach themselves to those who have the personality trait that allows them to members of the Tale society. They are concerned with the fortune of a person. The common sense observation is broken into three parts and is integrated where one entity is influence by the other. The sixth proposition he states is “In evolving a theoretical scheme, the human mind seems constrained to draw inspiration from analogy between the puzzling observations to be explained and certain already familiar phenomena.” This simply means that theoretical notions also maintain something similar to the familiar as the roots underlying the unfamiliar. Since the basis of theory is to explain order and regularity underlying apparent chaos, the search for analogies must turn in lean toward the areas that are closely related to these characters. Although both western and traditional African thoughts demonstrate this proposition, the western culture idioms are present in an impersonal way while that the African thought is presented in a personal way. This is because in the African societies, being with people is the lifestyle therefore their explanatory analogy turns naturally to people and relation. However, in the western world due to the change in industrial societies, people spend more time with non living objects therefore their explanatory analogy turns towards inanimate objects. The seven proposition is “where theory is founded on analogy between puzzling observation and familiar phenomena, it is generally only a limited aspect of such phenomena that is incorporated into the resulting model.” This simply means that only the features of a phenomenon that are included in the model are those that are relevant to the theory. This proposition is practiced in western science where atoms, molecules and so on are the result of the process of separating relevant features from the irrelevant features of prototype phenomena. African traditional thought also uses this significant feature. The definition of a god which is founded on people and social relations remove certain physic feature like is his diet, wife and so on because they find it irrelevant to the observation that evoked the theory. The eight proposition is “A theoretical model, once built, is developed in ways which sometimes obscure the analogy on which it was founded.” The theory in its initial state faces information that it cannot explain. Users usually modify the theory to enlarge its coverage by sometimes drawing further analogies with different phenomena that those provide when the theory was evoked. This makes the model seem to have a bizarre, hybrid air bout it. In science this characteristic is often displayed. For example, Rutherford atomic theory of matter was modified because it could not provided explanation for recalcitrant data and scientist agreed to develop it rather than scrap it off. Each modification in the atomic theory was the result of a demand for a larger explanatory coverage which drew the model further away from it initial familiar phenomena. This tendency is as seen in African traditional thought but not too clearly because we do not have enough historical data to fall on. However these models often show the same bizarre hybrid features as that of the scientists. Since there are many similarities between western science and African thought we can conclude that these features in African thought are a result of a need for further explanatory coverage. Robin Horton believes that the comparison he did above proves that African traditional thought is a theory. And it will people who seek to understand African theory get a clear understanding.