The complex problems facing developing countries
have often been attributed to the tendency of their people to maintain
traditional beliefs and practices. Many contemporary philosophers have
criticized traditional thought for failing to match the levels of efficiency
and effectiveness achieved by modern science. However, other contemporary
philosophers have suggested that modern science embodies tendencies that are
as likely to exacerbate as relieve the problems of the developing world. I
conclude that philosophers must be as wary of modern practices and beliefs as
they are of traditional practices and beliefs. Modernity rather than tradition
is undoubtably a principal source of Africa's problems. Philosophers discussed
include Kwame Gyekye, Robin Horton, Godwin Sogolo, Charles Taylor, Karl
Popper, Joseph Rouse, Justen Habermas, and Segun
Gbadegesun
Albert Mosley
Philosophy Department
Ohio University
Athens, OH 45701
Draft: Comments
Invited
Science and Technology in Contemporary
African Philosophy
This
paper will attempt to show how orientations towards development in Africa have
been influenced by unstated assumptions about the relationship between
traditional and modern beliefs, science and technology, and the relationship
between humankind and the natural world. I will argue that we must take as
critical a stance towards modern science as we take towards traditional religion
if development is to benefit the majority of people it affects. For the problems
suffered by the people of Africa and the third world are to a great extent the
result, not of traditional, but of modern beliefs and practices.
Standard accounts of modern science typically trace
its origins from the marriage of mathematical description, instrumentally
mediated observation, and experimental verification beginning in the 16th
century with the work of Galileo. Modern science is most frequently conceived of
as serving the cognitive function of producing true judgments about the nature
of reality. On the other hand, technology is conceived of as the application of
scientific knowledge to achieve predetermined practical results.
It is
such a view of the relationship between science and technology that leads Kwame
Gyekye to account for the lack of technological advancement in traditional and
modern Africa in terms of "the incomprehensible inattention to the search for
scientific principles by the traditional technologists".1For
Gyekye, the principal source of knowledge in African traditions is inductive
generalization from specific experiences and observations. Given his acceptance
of the view that science develops by a similar strategy, he expresses puzzlement
as to why such an epistemic outlook in traditional Africa did not lead to a
greater interest in the scientific principles underlying traditional
technologies.2His
conclusion is that the tendency for traditional Africans to provide causal
accounts in terms of spiritual or mystical powers stunted the growth of science.
3
Gyekye's views reflect those of Hans Reichenbach, who
in 1963 argued that scientific explanations and hypotheses were based on
inductive generalizations from observable facts to scientific principles. A
generalization was valid, Reichenbach held, if it was derived from the relevant
aspects of the circumstances in question. And facts were explained when they are
subsumed under general scientific laws. On the other hand, appeal to gods and
spirits in order to account for events were not explanations because they relied
on weak analogies to common sensical entities and processes. For Reichenbach,
the assignment of human qualities to physical objects was a form of
anthropomorphism that produced, not explanations, but pseudo-explanations.
"Where scientific explanations failed because the
knowledge of the time was insufficient to provide the right generalization,
imagination took its place and supplied a kind of explanation which appealed
to the urge for generality by satisfying it with naive parallelisms.
Superficial analogies, particularly analogies with human experiences, were
confused with generalizations and taken to be explanations. The search for
generality was appeased by the pseudo explanation." 4
It is
possible, however, to see explanations in terms of gods, spirits, and ancestors
in a different light. Thus, Robin Horton has argued that mystical accounts are
theoretical schemes linked by correspondence rules to the realm of common sense,
the aim being to account for anonomalous everyday happenings by appeal to
interactions between theoretical entities. As such, the mystical entities and
forces of primitive religions serve the same function as the theoretical forces
and entities of modern science. "Like atoms, molecules, and waves...the gods
serve to introduce unity into diversity, simplicity into complexity, order into
disorder, regularity into anomaly."5
Whenever a pattern of events or behavior does not
result in its usual or expected outcome, an explanation is called for.6 A typical
example is a disease that does not respond to the usual treatment. Explanations
that appeal to witchcraft or to germs transcend the realm of ordinary things and
events, and equally appeal to the realm of theory. On this view, mystical
thinking is simply another form of theoretical thinking.
"...the relation between the many spirits and the
one God...is essentially the same as the relation between the homogenous atoms
and planetary systems of fundamental particles in the thinking of a chemist.
It is a by-product of certain very general features of the way theories are
used in explanation."7
Horton
argues that theoretical entities in traditional Africa are modeled on the
activities of persons because "The human scene is the locus par
excellence of order, predictability, regularity."8 In modern
industrial societies, however, human interactions are in constant flux and the
locus of order, regularity and predictability are in the world of inanimate
things. Just as atoms and electromagnetic waves are theoretical entities
developed by analogy from ordinary inanimate objects and processes, so
"traditional thought draws upon people and their social relations as the raw
material of its theoretical models".9 Horton
concludes that "the theoretical models of traditional African thought are the
products of developmental processes comparable to those affecting the models of
the sciences", with the former being expressed in an idiom of persons and social
processes and the latter expressed in an idiom of inanimate things and
processes. A mere difference in idioms masks an identity of functions between
religious and scientific thinking.
For
Horton, the primary difference between African traditional religion and modern
western science is that traditional cultures are 'closed' and scientifically
oriented cultures 'open. By this he means that "in traditional cultures there is
no developed awareness of alternatives to the established body of theoretical
tenets; whereas in scientifically oriented cultures, such a awareness is highly
developed."10 This
absence of awareness of alternatives encourages an absolute commitment to the
theoretical idiom of spirits and mystical relations. Since the traditional
thinker "can imagine no alternatives to his established system of concepts and
words, the latter appear bound to reality in an absolute fashion", so that
manipulation of words and symbols is tantamount to manipulating the spirits and
mystical relations the words and symbols represent.11 "With the
change from the closed to the open predicament...the outlook behind magic
becomes intolerable", for thereafter words are able to vary independently of
reality.12
Horton's views reflect the influence of trends in the
philosophy of science which deny that the laws and principles that constitute
scientific knowledge are generalizations inferred from our perceptions of
particular facts. Representing such an orientation, Sir Karl Popper argued that
the attempt to specify a principle by means of which inductive inferences could
be justified was futile, because any principle justifying inductive inferences
would itself have to be the result of such an inference, and therefore would be
as much in need of justification as the inferences for which it was offered as
justification.
Popper recommended that we ignore how hypotheses
originate (whether they are generalizations from people or things, positing gods
or atoms) and focus instead on how they are validated. Validation of a
hypothesis involves at least the following three facets: first, the hypothesis
must be formulated and provisionally accepted; second, predictions must be
deduced from the hypothesis; and third, once a prediction has been made, it must
be determined by experiment or observation whether the prediction is satisfied
or not.
Much of the critique of Popper's work has
involved showing how problematic it is to conclusively falsify theoretical
descriptions by empirical observations. As a result, developments in the
philosphy of science led by Thomas Kuhn reject both inductive generalization and
experimental falsification as the engine of scientific progress. Instead, Kuhn
introduced the notion of a "paradigm" to, as he puts it, "underscore the
dependence of scientific research upon concrete examples". 13
Kuhn's
stress on the role of "exemplars" emphasizes the importance of perceptual and
pragmatic factors as essential aspects of scientific activities. He stressed
that the techniques mastered by a scientific apprentice are acquired in direct
relationship to the concrete situations in which they are to be applied, and not
merely by means of verbalized descriptions.
More
recently, Ian Hacking has also argued against the view that experimental
observation is grounded in linguistic competencies meant to produce or test more
general hypotheses. Hacking stresses that observation is not just a matter of
describing what we see. Nor is experimentation always or primarily for the
purpose of producing observations with descriptions that will generate or
falsify some theory. As Hacking puts it: "experimenting is not stating or
reporting but doing - and not doing things with words".14
This
approach rejects the view (implicit in Gyekye's critique of traditional beliefs
and practices) that the evolution of science serves the function of bringing us
closer and closer to true descriptions and laws of reality, and instead views
science as itself an extension of the technological transformation of reality.
Experiments manufacture phenomena rather than simply provide observations of
them.15 Such
phenomena are them packaged into devices, techniques, and algorithms that can be
used to give reliable results in a broad range of non-laboratory environments.
The knowledge resulting from experiment "is extended outside the laboratory not
by generalization to universal laws instantiable elsewhere, but by the
adaptation of locally situated practices to new local contexts."16
On
this view, experimental science introduces new phenomena into the world,
phenomena accessible rarely if at all to prescientific perception.17 Compasses
and hammers exist only because we have created them, and it is similar with
electrons.18 Each
allows us to reliably engage in certain kinds of activities (ocean navigation,
hammering, focusing electron beams) that otherwise would not be possible.
This
point of view places as much emphasis on science as the progeny of technology as
earlier views construed technology as the progeny of science. It portrays the
practical innovations inspired by the rise of capitalism as having more
influence on the rise of modern science than any inherent curiosity about the
nature of reality.19 Instead
of revealing the true nature of reality, we hould view science as reconstructing
reality in terms of the instruments at its disposal.20
This
provides additional insight to Robin Horton's suggestion that in contexts where
natural immunity is the primary defense against illness, a theory of illness and
healing that appeals to gods and ancestors may be the most effective remedy
available:
In the absence of antimalarials or antibiotics,
what happens to [a person infected with malaria] will depend very largely on
other factors that add to or subtract from his considerable natural
resistance. In these circumstances the traditional healer's efforts to cope
with the situation by ferreting out and attempting to remedy stress-producing
disturbances in the patient's social field is probably very relevant. Such
efforts may seem to have a ludicrously marginal importance to a hospital
doctor wielding a nivaquine bottle and treating a non-resistant European
malaria patient. But they may be crucial where there is no nivaquine bottle
and a considerable natural resistance to malaria.21
In a time when many medicines were ineffective and
even harmful, altering a persons attitude towards himself and others might have
had a greater effect on his or her wellbeing than any physical remedy
available.
It is
in this light that, following the suggestion of Kwasi Wiredu in his famous
essay, "How Not to Compare African Thought with Western Thought"22, Godwin
Sogolo urges that we compare traditional African beliefs, not with modern
science, but rather with traditional western beliefs.23 The
traditional beliefs of both Africa and Europe make the assumption that some
people are endowed with the ability to achieve good or bad effects by
supernatural means. As Sogolo wryly puts it, Jesus walked on water and witches
fly. The intervention of ancestors, gods, and other supernatural beings was
considered a principle cause of illness because it reflected the most effective
means of dealing with illness at the time, when a patient's beliefs and
attitudes played a critical part in the maintenance of wellbeing and the
restoration of health.
In a
classic Eurocentric view of the nature and development of science, Kurt
Mendelsohn argues that "..the consistent development of natural philosophy has
given to the white race the power of domination over others. It has been an
exclusively Western endeavour, arising as an intellectual effort out of a
specific cultural pattern."24 This view
portrays science as developing in and diffusing from Europe to the rest of the
world. And to the degree that other cultures have been able to appropriate the
scientific tradition, they have been able to resist western domination. But to
the extent that cultures have resisted or been unable to appropriate the
scientific tradition, to that extent have they experienced domination and
exploitation.
"The fact that Asia has now chosen to deviate
from its traditional pattern and to follow the technological road
demonstrates, better than any other argument, that the philosophical method of
science is the most outstanding contribution which has been made to human
progress in the last millennium. Since, for reasons unknown to us, scientific
progress has not been matched by a corresponding development in morality, the
white race has used this powerful method to dominate the globe. It seems that
those who apologize for the latter fact tend to forget the achievement of
having developed science in the first place. There is, moreover, no reason to
believe that , if another civilization had developed science, it would have
desisted from using it for exactly the same purpose."25
On the
other hand, the attempt to explain, predict, and control phenomena in Africa is
portrayed as not having evolved beyond traditional beliefs in magic and
witchcraft.26 Such a
point of view has encouraged many to believe that bringing a scientific outlook
to Africa was another part of the "white man's burden", and many have justified
the flow of material wealth from Africa to Europe as just compensation for the
flow of cultural wealth (in the form of Christianity, philosophy, and science)
from Europe to Africa.27
Objections to the Eurocentric model emphasize that in
1400 Europe was no more advanced than many non-western civilizations and the
evolution from feudalism to capitalism was taking place in many parts of the
world. Instead of science making possible Europe's exploitation of other
cultures, it was Europe's exploitation of non-western cultures that allowed them
to develop the technological base we now identify as science.
"...the rise of Europe above other civilizations
did not begin until 1492 [and] resulted not from any European superiority of
mind, culture, or environment, but rather from the riches and spoils obtained
in the conquest and colonial exploitation of America and, later, Africa and
Asia."28
Understanding science as the dis-interested pursuit
of truth portrays it in value free terms and masquerades its relationship to
technological power. Herbert Marcuse writes:
"The principles of modern science were a
priori structured in such a way that they could serve as conceptual
instruments for a universe of self-propelling productive control... . ...The
scientific method which led to the ever-more-effective domination of nature
thus came to provide the pure concepts as well as the instrumentalities for
the ever-more-effective domination of man by man through the domination
of nature. ... Today, domination perpetuates and extends itself not only
through technology but as technology... "29 "The
point which I am trying to make", Marcuse continues, "is that science, by
virtue of its own method and concepts, has projected and promoted a
universe in which the domination of nature has remained linked to the
domination of man... ."30
Habermas concurs:
"...the empirical sciences have developed since
Galileo's time within a methodological frame of reference that reflects the
transcendental viewpoint of possible technical control. Hence the modern
sciences produce knowledge which through its form (and not through the
subjective intentions of scientists) is technically exploitable knowledge...
."31
While
the practice of science produces knowledge that is in principle technologically
exploitable, Habermas opposes the ideology of science that legitimizes and
extends that methodology to all spheres of modern life. While Marcuse argues
that the scientific domination of nature leads naturally to the domination of
man32, Habermas
argues that a different attitude toward human nature is required, an attitude of
participation and interaction rather than control and prediction. But, he
admonishes, we will only be able to interact with nature in a non-dominant way
when we have learnt to interact with one another in non-dominant ways.33
Conclusion.
On the
view of science I would recommend, it's purpose is, not truth, but knowledge
that can be used to exploit phenomena for particular interests. Recognizing that
traditional African practices in medicine, agriculture, and other areas were
effective means of dealing with local conditions is an important remedy for the
view that science flows unidirectionally from Europe to Africa. Efficient and
effective techniques for producing the necessities of life are a necessary
condition for the survival of any culture. But as the work of Heidegger,
Marcuse, and Habermas indicates, when the production of scientific knowledge
becomes our ultimate value, we produce human domination, not liberation.
Just
as Europe absorbed developments that had taken place in non-European cultures
(gunpowder, the compass, the clock, Algebra, etc), so Africa must utilize
developments that have evolved in non-African cultures. But though it may be
necessary for African cultures to adopt a more quantitative and analytical
orientation,
it is also necessary that they avoid making
prediction and control their panacea.
In the
final pages of his book African Philosophy: Traditional Yoruba Philosophy and
Contemporary African Realities, Segun Gbadegesin poses the question: "are
African cultures an impediment to development?"34
Gbadegesin notes that traditional beliefs may impede the valuation of work if
workers attribute the quality of their work to witchcraft or destiny and not to
their own efforts. He concludes that, to facilitate the development of a proper
work ethic, such beliefs may have to be rejected. But this, I believe, is
premature.
Traditional beliefs in miracles and traditional
beliefs in witchcraft both assume that some people are endowed with supernatural
abilities. means. As Godwin Sogolo wryly puts it, Jesus walked on water and
witches fly. Similarly, I would argue,
belief in prayer has not been incompatible with
development in the west, and belief in curses need not be so in Africa.
I do
not believe that the work ethic of Africans is impeded by their traditional
beliefs in the existence of individuals with supernatural powers. Rather, as
Gbadegesin acknowledges, so long as work is viewed as a form of dominance and
exploitation, it will be viewed as a curse.35 And this
is much more likely to be the primary cause of worker apathy than belief in the
curse of witches.
Too
often, explanations of the problems of underdeveloped countries in general, and
Africa in particular, have identified traditional beliefs and practices as a
primary cause of their backwardness relative to the West. The adoption of modern
scientific beliefs and practices and the diffusion of western values and
technology has thus been seen as a primary solution. 36
The
view of science I have traced suggests that the practice of science is
insufficient for human liberation. In order to correct the degradation of the
social and physical environment that has been a consequent of the rise of
science, a different attitude toward both nature and human nature is required,
an attitude of participation and interaction rather than control and
domination.
Despite the ill-repute in which he is often held,
Lucien Levy Bruhl rejected the view that magic, religion, and other forms of
mystical thinking were simply less effective pre-scientific ways of accounting
for reality. Rather, magical concepts "all involve a "participation"
between persons or objects which form part of a collective
representation."37
Rather
than arranged in a hierarchy of increasing generality, Levy Bruhl held that
prelogical concepts were bound together "in a complexity of collective
representations whose emotional force fully compensates ... the authority which
will be given to general concepts by their logical validity ....".38 This view
is reflected in Leopold Senghor's famous claim that "Classical European
reason is analytical and makes use of the object. African reason is intuitive
and participates in the object". For Senghor "..it is their emotive
attitude towards the world which explains the cultural values of Africans.."
39*
In
Les Carnets, Levy Bruhl altered his thesis of a radical
incommensurability between western and non-western minds, and argued instead
that the two modes of thought coexisted in every culture, magic dominating in
some and science in others. I would suggest that each individual has this
capacity for multiple orientations to reality, and this capacity must be
cultivated.[tambiah]
In
this regard, I place myself in a tradition of thinkers who have believed that
the antidote to much of what is worse about modern science may be found in
traditional beliefs:
Under traditional religious paradigms, it was ...
possible to have divine rivers, divine lakes, divine trees and mountains, or
even animals. In other words, aspects of nature were even superior to
humanity, or at least they did not exist for the satisfaction of people's
pleasures or needs. Then came the intervention of Islam and the West in Africa
altering the relationship betwee humanity and nature. The new cultures were
more materialist and consumerist than indigenous ones. People ... were
conceived in the image of their Maker. As such people were not coordinate, let
alone subordinate, to nature but rather superordinate to it. 40
Nature must again become a 'thou' and not merely an
'it'. 41
1 Kwame Gyekye, "Technology and Culture
in a Developing Country, Philosophy, Supplement 38, 1995,
p.121)
2 Gyekye,
pp.122-123
3 "..a culture that was obsessed with
supernaturalistic or mystical causal explanations would hardly develop the
scientific attitude in the users of that culture".
Gyekye,p.124
4 Hans Riechenbach, The Rise of
Scientific Philosophy, (Berkeley: The Univ. of California Press, 1963),
p.8
5 Robin Horton, "African Traditional
Thought and Western Science" in African Philosophy: Selected Readings ed.
by Albert Mosley, (NY:Prentice Hall, 1995), p.304
6 Stephen Toulmin, Foresight and
Understanding, (NY:Harper & Row, 1961), chpt.3
7 Robin Horton, "African Traditional
Thought and Western Science" in African Philosophy: Selected Readings
ed. by Albert Mosley, (NY:Prentice Hall, 1995), p.314
8 Horton, p.316
9 ibid, p.317
10 ibid, p.322
11 ibid, p.324
12 ibid, p.326
13 Kuhn,1970,p.14
14 ibid, p.173
15 Rouse p.102,
p.111
16 Rouse, p.125
17 ibid, p.146
18 ibid, pp.157-8
19 J.M. Blaut, The Colonizer's Model
of the World: Geographical Diffusionism and Eurocentric History, (NY: The
Guilford Press, 1993)
20 see Barry Barnes, Interests and
the Growth of Knowledge, (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977); and David
Bloor, Knowledge and Social Imagery, (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,
1976)
22 in Mosley, p.159
23 Godwin Sogolo, Foundations of
African Philosophy, (Ibadan, Nigeria: Ibadan University Press,
1993
24 Mendelsohn,
p.207
26 "The spread of science outside the
white orbit is a very recent development which still has not taken firm root
except in the Far East. We must leave out black Africa since it chose to remain
in an agricultural village society, never creating proper urban centers, the
institution of the state, or the development of a script, and therefore was
incapable of producing science. The term 'chose to remain' has been applied
purposely since, if they had wished to, Africans could have copied all these
achievements from Egypt, with which they were in close contact five thousand
years ago. In fact, until this day, native attempts at controlling the forces of
nature have remained at the magic level of the fetish priest and the medicine
man. The very recent scientific effort in black Africa is a meager graft that
has not yet seriously taken." (Mendelsohn, 205)
27 Blaut, p.16
32Lorenzo Simpson, in his Technology,
Time, and the Conversations of Modernity (NY: Routledge, 1995) gives the
following characterization of the Heidegger/Marcuse view of science and
technology: "A technological civilization predisposes us to experience and to
frame our talk about things in terms of their manifest utility or potential for
use - to experience them within the framework of means and ends."(pp.76-77) As
such, the modern age is one in which "factors that are not relevant to
technological functioning have no significance". (p.78) The point of technology
is to domesticate the future, so that only what suits our interests
materializes. (p.91)
33 Habermas, p.115 Harbermas' response
to the technological imperative of functional rationality is his notion of
communicative rationality. (p.80) For more on this see Simpson, chapters 3 &
4 Habermas writes: "Only if men could communicate without compulsion and
each could recognize himself in the other, could mankind possibly recognize
nature as another subject: not, as idealism would have it, as it's Other, but as
a subject of which mankind itself is the Other. (88)
34 Segun Gbadegesin, African
Philosophy: Traditional Yoruba Philosophy and Contemporary African
Realities, (NY: Peter Laing, 1991), p.260
35 ibid, chpt. 9 (the Ethics and
Politics of Work) has a sub-section entitled "Understanding the Conception of
Work as a Curse", in which he discusses the debilitating effects of worsening
poverty and brazen corruption on African laborers view of
work.
36 see O.P. Dwivedi, Development
Administration: From Underdevelopment to Sustainable Development (New York:
St. Martin's Press, 1994), p.6
37 ibid, p.61
38 ibid, p.110. In a passage that
presages Senghor, Lb writes:
"The prelogical mind does not objectify nature..
. It lives it rather, by feeling itself participate in it, and feeling
these participations everywhere; and it interprets this complexity of
participations by social forms." (p.111)
39 * p.35. Senghor's primary difference
with LB is that while Senghor attributed the difference between "a white
European civilization and a black African civilization" to "the
psycho-physiology of each race", LB limited his explanation of the difference to
the evolution of different cultural traditions.
40 Omari H. Kokole, "The Political
Economy of the African Environment" in Faces of Environmental Racism
ed. by Laura Westra and Peter Wenz (Lanhan, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield,
1995), p.176
41 Kokole, p.165. see also Kwasi Wiredu,
"The Need fir "Conceptual Decolonization in African Philosophy" in Conceptual
Decolonization in African Philosophy: Four Essays, ed. by Olusegun Oladipo
(Ibadan, Nigeria: Hope Publications, 1995)
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