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Professor Winch on Safari

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Robin Horton
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Extract

One of the most widely cited of recent writings on the borderland of philosophy and anthropology is Peter Winch's ‘Understanding a Primitive Society’ (referred to hereafter as UPS)(I). The main reason for the breadth of its appeal would seem to be a blend of general principle and particular application all too seldom found in the writings of philosophers of social science. Thus, on the one hand, Winch develops further some of the general principles of cross-cultural understanding which he first enunciated in his Idea of a Social Science (referred to hereafter as ISS) (2). And, on the other hand, he attempts to show us, in considerable detail, how these principles can be applied to the solution of a particularly vexing anthropological problem: that of interpreting ‘primitive’ mystical thought.

Type
Notes Critiques
Information
European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie , Volume 17 , Issue 1 , May 1976 , pp. 157 - 180
Copyright
Copyright © Archives Européenes de Sociology 1976

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References

(1) Winch, P., Understanding a Primitive Society, American Philosophical Quarterly, I (1964), 307–324Google Scholar. Reprinted in Wilson, B. (ed.), Rationality (Oxford 1970). (Page references are to the reprinted version.)

(2) Winch, P., The Idea of a Social Science (London 1958)Google Scholar.

(3) Amongst the more interesting of these are: Gellner, E., The New Idealism: cause and meaning in the social sciences, in Lakatos, I., and Musgrave, A. (eds), Problems in the Philosophy of Science (Amsterdam 1968)Google Scholar; Jarvie, I., Concepts Society (London 1972)Google Scholar (See especially ch. II: Understanding and explaining in the social sciences); Kekes, J., Towards a Theory of Rationality, Philosophy of Social Sciences, III (1973) 275–288CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lukes, S., Some Problems about Rationality, European Journal of Sociology, VIII (1967), 247–264CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mounce, H., Understanding a Primitive Society, Philosophy, XLVIII (1973), 347–362CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Macin-Tyre, A., A Mistake about Causality in the Social Sciences, in Laslett, P. and Runciman, W. (eds.), Philosophy, Politics and Society (Oxford 1963) vol. IIGoogle Scholar; Mac Intyre, A., The Idea of a Social Science, Aristotelian Society Supplement, XLI (1967), pp. 95–114CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

(4) UPS pp. 78–95.

(5) UPS p. 102.

(6) Although Winch does not explicitly state this extreme possibility, some of his more gnomic remarks, like ‘our idea of what belongs to the realm of reality is given for us in the language we use’ and ‘logical relations between propositions depend on social relations between men’, have led more than one commentator to read him in this sense. See for instance Lukes, , op. cit. (1976)Google Scholar.

(7) UPS pp. 93, 102, 106.

(8) UPS pp. 107–111.

(9) Malinowski, B., A Scientific Theory of Culture (Chapel Hill 1944)Google Scholar; Piddington, R., Malinowski's Theory of Needs, in Firth, R. (ed.), Man and Culture (London 1957)Google Scholar; Goldschmidt, W., Comparative Functionalism (Berkeley 1966)Google Scholar.

(10) ISS pp. 40–65.

(11) On this, see: Hampshire, S., Thought and Action (London 1959)Google Scholar; Joske, W., Material Objects (London 1967)Google Scholar; Lukes, S., op. cit. (1967)Google Scholar; Lukes, S., On the Social Determination of Truth, in Horton, R. and Finneoan, R. (eds), Modes of Thought (London 1973)Google Scholar; Strawson, P., Individuals (London 1959)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Strawson, P., The Bounds of Sense (London 1966)Google Scholar; Zinkernagel, P., Conditions for Description (London 1962)Google Scholar.

(12) Horton, R., Paradox and Explanation: a reply to Mr. Skorupski, Parts I and II, Philosophy of the Social Sciences, III (1973), 231–256, 289–312Google Scholar.

(13) Winch does not make it very clear what he understands by ‘primitive’. Here, I assume, he means pre-literate, pre-industrial, pre-scientific.

(14) UPS pp. 103–105.

(15) Winch, P., Savage and Modern Minds, Times Higher Education Supplement, 7 09 1973, p. 13Google Scholar.

(16) These remarks are part of a critique of my essay ‘Levy-Bruhl, Durkheim and the Scientific Revolution’ which was published in Horton, and Finnegan, , op. cit. (1973)Google Scholar.

(17) For my use of the phrase ‘face value’, see Horton, op. cit. (1973), pp. 294–295Google Scholar. it should be placed in the context of my remarks on pp. 276–283.

(18) Evans-Pritchard, E., Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande (Oxford 1937)Google Scholar.

(19) Relevant passages are found vir- tually throughout the book. I suggest, however, that the reader in a hurry look particularly at the following: top of p. 88 to top of p. 89; top of p. 90 to halfway down p. 91; halfway down p. 148 to top of p. 149; pp. 261–266; p. 341. In using the word perverse to characterise Winch's interpretation of these and other passages, I have unwittingly followed John Skorupski. See: Skorupski, J., What is Magic? Cambridge Review, 01 1975Google Scholar.

(20) Evans-Pritchahd, , op. cit. p. 319Google Scholar.

(21) UPS p. 89.

(22) Winch uses this parody in the course of criticizing Evans-Pritchard for evaluating Zande mystical beliefs in terms of their truth or falsity as judged by the criteria of contemporary Western science. Since my particular interest in the present paper has been in other issues, I have by-passed this one. Suffice it to say here that my own view is (a) that, for obvious reasons, it is unfruitful, as an initial move, for the sociologist of thought to classify particular beliefs in terms of their truth or falsity; but (6) that having classified such beliefs in terms of other criteria, it is perfectly legitimate to go on and ask whether, as a matter of fact, they are true or false.

(23) UPS p. 87.

(24) UPS p. 88.

(25) UPS p. 88.

(26) Evans-Pritchard, , op. cit. pp. 21–49, 63–84Google Scholar.

(27) ‘Operationalism’ in the sciences is the doctrine that an entity emust be defined solely in terms of the human operations associated with assertions about it.

(28) This point is well made by Mounce, , op. cit. (1973)Google Scholar.

(29) On this, see: Horton, R., African Traditional Thought and Western Science, Part I, Africa, XXXVII (1967), pp. 54–58Google Scholar.

(30) Evans-Pritchard, op. cit. passim.

(31) Polanyi, M., Personal Knowledge (Chicago 1958), pp. 286–294Google Scholar.

(32) Kuhn, T., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago 1962)Google Scholar.

(33) On this, see: Lakatos, I., Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes, and Feyerabend, P., Consolations for the Specialist; both in Lakatos, I. and Musgrave, A. (eds.), Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge 1970)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

(34) Evans-Pritchard, , op. cit. p. 25Google Scholar.

(35) UPS p. 93.

(36) Evans-Pritchard, , op. cit. p. 25Google Scholar.

(37) Evans-Pritchard, , op. cit. p. 63Google Scholar.

(38) On this, see the essays and discussions in Toulmin, S. (ed.), Quanta and Reality (London 1962)Google Scholar; especially the postscript by N.R. Hanson, pp. 83–93. See also Lakatos, I., op. cit. especially pp. 142–154Google Scholar, where he characterizes Bohr's development of early quantum theory ‘progress on inconsistent foundations’.

(39) UPS p. 103.

(40) Evans-Pritchard, , op. cit. p. 64Google Scholar.

(41) Evans-Pritchard, , op. cit. pp. 37, 74Google Scholar.

(42) Evans-Pritchard, , op. cit. p. 269Google Scholar.

(43) For the importance of this image, not only in the elucidation of theoretical activity, but perhaps even in its genesis, see my ‘Paradox and Explanation’, esp. pp. 248–250, 303–308.

(44) Evans-Pritchard, , op. cit. pp. 33, 464Google Scholar.

(45) Michotte, A., The Perception of Causality (London 1963)Google Scholar.

(46) On this, see Toulmin, S. and Good-Field, J., The Architecture of Matter (London 1962), pp. 194–197Google Scholar; Born, M., Natural Philosophy of Cause and Chance (Oxford 1951), pp. 8–9, 16–17, 25–30Google Scholar; Born, M., Physics in My Generation (London 1965), pp. 21–22, 96–98Google Scholar.

(47) Winch, , op.cit. (1973)Google Scholar: ‘But one of the points which Evans-Pritchard was at pains to emphasize in his work on the Zande was precisely that the appeal to notions of witchcraft was not used as a stop-gap or underpinning of commonsense explanations, but occurred in the context of answering different kinds of question.

(48) Both Evans-Pritchard and I have emphasized the need to treat various African arts as Art. See for instance Evans-Pritchard, E., The Zande Trickster (Oxford 1967)Google Scholar; Horton, R., The Kalahari Ekine Society: a borderland of religion and art, Africa, XXXIII (1963), 94–114CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I think Winch would find some of the methodological attitude s in the latter very close to his own.

(49) See for instance Horton, R., African Traditional Thought and Western Science; Paradox and Explanation; African Conversion, Africa, XLI (1971), 85–108CrossRefGoogle Scholar; On Rationality of Conversion, Africa, XLV (1975), 219–235, 373–399Google Scholar.

(50) Amongst the more relevant studies of this phenomenon are Sundkler, B., Bantu Prophets in South Africa (London 1961)Google Scholar; Pauw, B., Religion in a Tstvana Chiefdom (London 1960)Google Scholar; Baeta, C., Prophetism in Ghana (London 1962)Google Scholar; Turner, H., African Independent Church (Oxford 1967). 2 volsGoogle Scholar; Peel, J., Aladura (London 1968)Google Scholar.

(51) Horton, , op. cit. (1971)Google Scholar.

(52) Rev. Wariboko Amakiri, a pioneer Kalahari evangelist, recalled this reaction vividly in a conversation I had with him not long before his death.

(53) Peel, , op. cit. p. 110Google Scholar.

(54) Peel, , op. cit. p. 212Google Scholar.

(55) Baeta, , op. cit. pp. 4, 137Google Scholar.

(56) Baeta, , op. cit. p. 54Google Scholar.

(57) Sundkler, , op. cit. p. 220Google Scholar.

(58) Sundkler, , op. cit. p. 220Google Scholar.

(59) The transition from a religious life of this kind to a religious life of the kind expounded by Winch is one of the themes of Thomas, K., Religion and the Decline of Magic (London 1971)Google Scholar.

(60) On this, see Toulmin, and Good-Field, , op. cit. pp. 51–52, 61, 101–105, 148–156, 194–195Google Scholar.

(61) On this, see Burtt, E., The Meta-physical Foundations of Modern Science (London 1967), pp. 202–299Google Scholar.

(62) Teilhard de Chardin, P., The Future of Man (London 1964)Google Scholar.

(63) Hardy, A., The Living Stream (London 1966)Google Scholar.

(64) Koestler, Arthur is a typical figure in this context. See his; The Roots of Coincidence (London 1972)Google Scholar.

(65) It was this aspect of his interpretation which suggested to me the somewhat waspish title of this paper: safari being notoriously the type of expedition on which one learns nothing from either the locals or the locale!