Table Of ContentKNOWLEDGE CULTURES
POZNA(cid:275) STUDIES
IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE SCIENCES AND THE HUMANITIES
VOLUME 88
EDITORS
Jerzy Brzezi(cid:276)ski Izabella Nowakowa
Andrzej Klawiter Katarzyna Paprzycka (managing editor)
Piotr Kwieci(cid:276)ski (assistant editor) Marcin Paprzycki
Krzysztof (cid:224)astowski Piotr Przybysz (assistant editor)
Leszek Nowak(editor-in-chief) Michael J. Shaffer
ADVISORY COMMITTEE
Joseph Agassi (Tel-Aviv) Leon Koj (Lublin)
Étienne Balibar (Paris) W(cid:225)adys(cid:225)aw Krajewski (Warszawa)
WolfgangBalzer (München) Theo A.F. Kuipers (Groningen)
Mario Bunge (Montreal) Witold Marciszewski (Warszawa)
Nancy Cartwright (London) Ilkka Niiniluoto (Helsinki)
Robert S. Cohen (Boston) Günter Patzig (Göttingen)
Francesco Coniglione (Catania) Jerzy Perzanowski (Toru(cid:276))
Andrzej Falkiewicz (Wroc(cid:225)aw) Marian Prze(cid:225)(cid:266)cki (Warszawa)
Dagfinn Føllesdal (Oslo) Jan Such (Pozna(cid:276))
Bert Hamminga (Tilburg) Max Urchs (Konstanz)
Jaakko Hintikka (Boston) Jan Wole(cid:276)ski (Kraków)
Jacek J. Jadacki (Warszawa) Ryszard Wójcicki (Warszawa)
Jerzy Kmita (Pozna(cid:276))
Pozna(cid:276) Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities
is partly sponsored by SWPS and Adam Mickiewicz University
Address: dr Katarzyna Paprzycka . Instytut Filozofii . SWPS . ul. Chodakowska 19/31
03-815 Warszawa .Poland. fax: ++48 22 517-9625
E-mail: [email protected] . Website: http://PoznanStudies.swps.edu.pl
KNOWLEDGE CULTURES
COMPARATIVE WESTERN AND
AFRICAN EPISTEMOLOGY
Edited by
Bert Hamminga
AMSTERDAM–NEW YORK, NY 2005
The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of "ISO
9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents -
Requirements for permanence".
ISSN 0303-8157
ISBN: 90-420-1996-4
©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2005
Printed in The Netherlands
CONTENTS
Bert Hamminga, Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, The Power of Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Kwame Anthony Appiah, African Studies and the Concept of Knowledge 23
Bert Hamminga, Epistemology from the African Point of View . . . . . 57
Bert Hamminga, Language, Reality and Truth: The African Point of View 85
Leszek Nowak, On the Collective Subjects in Epistemology:
The Marxist Case and a Problem for the African Viewpoint . . . . 117
Bert Hamminga, The Pozna(cid:276) View: How To Mean What You Say . . . 129
Contributors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Index and Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
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INTRODUCTION
Why compare the western ideas of knowledge with the African? And why do
so in Pozna(cid:276) Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities?
One of the key interests of western philosophy is to characterize the specifics
of the Modern western concept of knowledge, the concept that arose out of the
late Mediaeval and early Renaissance revolution of thought. Such a
characterization involves a difficulty similar to that of making the fish
understand its water: one needs other environments to explain the specifics of
one’s own in which one grew up, taking it for granted. One needs alternative
concepts of knowledge for comparison. These are not readily at hand in
western society.
A usual and highly effective method of creating a window with a view on
the modern western concept of knowledge is the study of Greek and Mediaeval
philosophy and science. By pondering the in many respects so very surprising
epistemological taxonomies and rules of argument of Greek and Mediaeval
culture, one gains access to such questions as: what would pre-modern
philosophers have thought about modern westerners? Where and why do
modern westerners disagree with pre-modern views on what is knowledge and
how to acquire it? Surely the analogy with the fish may well hold, insofar as
this is nothing but a small jump above the surface of the epistemological fluid
in which modern western man swims, but any such attempt, however restricted
in its power to give self-insight should clearly be worth any philosopher’s
trouble.
In finding different epistemological concepts that might help us mirror
western culture, time is not the only dimension through which one can travel.
Space can do the job, as long as substantially different cultures still exist. The
culture of Sub-Saharan Africa is the substance from which we, in this book,
have tried to put together an epistemological mirror. That was no easy task.
Complete precision is even impossible. Like western culture, African culture is
under way. It may, conventionally, be thought to have arisen from a “classical”
tribal state, cherished by anthropologists, the subject of romanticism both by
westerners and many a modern African, to become something that is now
evolving rapidly, partly converging to the western world view – which itself is
in its own revolution, not free of African influences, though usually not
identified as such.
But we hope our volume is not only relevant to western, but even to African
philosophy. It should be conceded, though, that Africans have a long-standing
advantage over westerners in understanding the culture with which they came
8 Bert Hamminga
into contact. As far as westerners are concerned: in both the scientific and the
artistic literature, accounts, stories and anecdotes abound which feature
westerners penetrating Africa without the slightest awareness that their own
cultural education could be enhanced by the richness of human cultures of the
continent, maintaining this conviction remarkably stubbornly, whatever they
were confronted with during their stay, even if this was to last the rest of their
lives. Africans, however, since the first advent of westerners in Africa, have
been motivated – the hard way – to penetrate the white man’s mind. To
Africans, learning properly to understand the brutal, powerful white man,
quickly after his first entry in the continent, became a matter of life and death.
Yet this volume does not engage in the comparative normative evaluation
of the methods of knowledge acquisition of the different cultures. This is
because it easily leads to conclusions that are far from novel, such as that the
western attitude has led to greater technical capabilities in many fields (like
flying, killing people and polluting the environment). On the other hand it
leads to similar arguments from the African side that might raise western
skeptical rationalist emotions that are not helpful to the problem at hand, such
as that, in Africa, knowledge traditionally comes from ancestors – dead, but
existing and acting ancestors. Norms rest on evaluation principles, and there
are no such interculturally accepted principles available. Simply put: priorities
diverge widely among the cultures and we shall not discuss who has the best
ones. There are better things to do than to raise the typical western competitive
discussions on “what’s the best” that in western philosophy of science
overshadow so many of the more interesting and civilized scholarly questions.
“Scientific” literature on African thought abounds. A lot of it, written both
by western scientists and Africans trained scientifically in the western sense, is
so much occupied with the western rituals of knowledge acquisition that it
immediately sinks, – often never to be seen again – into statistical analysis of
data obtained from random samples and their control groups. At the beginning
of every attempt to understand, however, is the problem of getting your
concepts right. “Knowledge”, “truth”, “finding the truth”, yes, virtually all
abstract concepts are bound to leave an African and a westerner talking in such
terms in utter confusion. Africans traditionally have a profoundly different use
and interpretation, yes, a different idea about the nature of language! This
volume involves making two efforts: enhancing the western understanding of
the way in which Africans engineer their knowledge, and enhancing African
understanding of how this differs from western style of knowledge engineering
(“science” in the western sense of that word). These two efforts require some
common skills that are hard to acquire, but that are completely different in
other respects. The volume concentrates on the former effort, which we think
is the one of which the results are still lagging: showing what westerners can
Introduction 9
learn about themselves by trying to genuinely understand the logic of the
African way of thinking.
Some illustrations, updates on related research, sequel research and links
can be found on http://mindphiles.com/knowledgecultures.
Bert Hamminga
