THOUGHTS ON KNOWIEDGE. AND IGNORANCE z John Howland Rowe Dr. Tax was kind enough to show me his paper on "Animnistic and Rational Thought" before he submitted it for publication, and we spent a pleasant hour arguing over some of the questions it raises. Dr. Tax proposed that I write out a staterrrt of our differences which could appear along with the original paper, and I want to express my apprecia- tion to him for this generous suggestlon. Ethnographers face squarely the great dilemm of cultural anthro- pology: the dilemma of cultural objectivity. The fact is that cultural anthropology is itself a cultural phenomenon, a product of the particular line of cultural development that Western culture has followed. Ethnog- raphers are the products of Western cultural training and their work Involves the interpretation of other cultures to fellow members of their own. How, then, can they be "objective" in their own comparisons, "objective" in the sense that their culture expects scholars to be objectite? Objectivity, in cultural anthropology, means an attempt to avoid ethnocentrism, the attribution of universal validity to the values and ideals which are characteristic of our own culture at this particular date. But values of some sort we must have; even the most impersonal description of another culture Involves selection and emphasis; the mater- ials must be arranged in ordar and a classification Imposed. Our standards for these operations are perhaps not identical with those which would occur to a member of our culture without anthropological training who got the idea of writing a book on, say, a Guatemalan village, but neither are they uninfluenced by Western cultural interests and values. It is doubt- ful if there would be anyone to read our reports if they were. In striving for anthropological objectivity we have two obvious choices. One Is to accept, in so far as possible, the cultural values of the culture being studied; the other is to attempt to set up miversal values which we can then apply to all cultures. The basis of my disagrae- ment with Dr. Tax is that he has chosen the latter alternative while I prefer the formor. I do not see how any attempt to set up universal values can avoid dependence on the cultural values of our culture and I do not believe that Dr. TaxVs attempt has done so. The distinction made between "knowledge" (experimentally verified belief) and "ig.gnorance" (belief which has not been experimentally ver- ified) i-Lies a faith in the conclutsion3. of sctence which many scien- tists do not char-i, Ho' reliable i"c-- erimental verification?" At best it y.e1dte a at:,!et of probabil.tv based m a correlation. To deduve cani t r- @ o:rsIation is to riuL t?e danger of following Anthony Stari.cm'ls PFc&. ;wtTer ar6ument: If a %'.n gets drunk on Monday on whiskey and rodca on Tu,-1nay on. braUAy and scda, and on Wednesday on gin and soda, obviously the soc.a water, the common factor in the three cases, Is the cause of the drunkenness. (1) 6 This type of argument is common enough in cultures other than our own, and we see the fallacy eastly because the conclusion is at variance with: our own belief, but it It easy to forget that we use precisely the same argumlnt all the time ourselves - and convince ourselves by It. Standen mentions it, not as a characteristic pattern of non-scientific thought, but as a common error of sclentists. A speclal case of the soda water argument is what I call "clinical proof." Suppose that a man is hit over the head with a club and his skull Is bent in so that he has a chronic headache. He goes to a medicine man who explains to him that he has an evil spirit In his head which got into the wound and that it will be necesary to let It out., He then per- forms a trepanation, removing part of the bent bone, and the patient's headache disappears. Does the result constltute experimental verifica- tion of the medicine man's explanation of the cause of the headache? An exactly parallel argument has been used to verify psychoanalytic personality theory. Standen makes another point which Is relevant here, and that is that not all beliefs resulting from sensory impressions can be experimentally verified In any sense (p. 32). Ne6ative beliefs cannot be verified. There is no scientific method for proving that ghosts or other supernat- ural beings do not exist. Furthermore, numroue people, even in our own culture, claim to have seen them. In this case, scientists simply assume the absence of supernatural beings -- i. e., they agree not to rest their explanations of observed phenomena on supernatural Intervention. This aesumption itself, of course, is an act of faith. Many statements believed by nineteenth century scientists to be abundantly verified are now rejected by their successors. If we project this trend toward the revaluation of scientific beliefs into the future, we can expect that many of our present beliefs will be dismissed as ignor- ance by our successors. Quite possibly, we, looking at their evidence, would acceipt their conclusions; the point Is that the conclusions would be different. My prediction Is not subject to present verification, naturally, but tf I had any assurance of being both alive and solvent at the turn of the twenty-first century, I would be willing to make quite a large bet on it. Dr. Tax, of course, is not maintaining that all our beliefs are knowledge; he says that some of them are and some are not, but that, as compared with other cultures. an unusually large percentage of ours are verifiable. My argument thus far has been designed to ehow that, even deflning verification as Dr. Tax does, the percentage of knowledge in our culture is less than he thinks.(2) But, to go back to the choice I set up at the beginning of this paper, I will further maintain that Dr. T-x has assumed a universal value (absolute truth) and that this assumption itself Is an unverif table belief which is derived from a traditional value of Western culture. I would prefer to assume that standards of tyuth are conventional under- standings among men and hence vary as cultures vary. 7 Dr. Tax has made a secondary aesuswption aa the basis of his histor- ical reconstruction. Going on from his definitions of "knowledge" and "ignorance," he assumes that mankind began in a state of tgnorance. Since he has already stated that knowledge 18 characteristic of our modern cul- ture, he sees a growth of rationalism between the two extremes and flnds some such growth also in all "smaller and more isolated communities," though these are "more backward in this (volution." As a result, he pictures an evolutionary process (the development of knowledge) taking place in all cultures in the se direction but going furthest in our own. The picture could readily be developed into a scheme lika Lewis- Morgan's or Jullan Steward's. I quite fail to see why, even granting Dr. Tax's definitions, we should assumE that man began In a state of ignorance. Why not assuml that he began with some ignorance and some knowledge? We have no record to check against ln this case but the latter assumption is at least as reasonable as the one Dr. Tax makes. The reader will note that Dr. Tax feels that modern "primitive" cultures are characterized by ignorance; under the assumption I prefer there would be no traceable change In the relative Importance of ignorance and knowledge in at least some of these cultures, and hence no gernral evolutionary process. As I have already explained, I also question the valldity of the distinction between ignorance and knowledge and the belief that knowledge is characteristic of our culture. This eituation leaves us with little agreement but with a most interesting argument. FOOTNCOTES (1) Anthony Standen, Science is a Sacred Cow. E. P. Dutton and Company, Inc.., New York 1950, p. 25. (2) Anthropologists have been very slow to dlasect their own culture In the perspective of their experience of cultural d'fferencee, and It is easy for us to overlook the absurdities and contra- dictions in our own cultural patterns. A stimulating beginning along these lines has been made recently by Jules Henry. See his "Cultural ObJectification of the Case History." American Journal of Orthop3ychiatry, vol. 19, no. 4, October, 9.7Tp. 5-673. Mnasha. I want to thank Dr. Margaret Lantis for calling my attention to this article. 8