Geoffrey Ernest Richard Lloyd - Demystifying Mentalities (Themes in the Social Sciences) (1990).pdf

يستخدم القارئ النص الأرشيفي المحفوظ عند توفره، ويعرض النص حسب ترتيب القراءة المتاح؛ وقد يختلف عن تنسيق الملف والصيغ والصور المضمنة. الاستماع يقرأ النص كما هو ولا يترجمه.

Demystifying mentalities

Themes in the Social Sciences Editors: John Dunn, Jack Goody, Eugene A. Hammel, Geoffrey Hawthorn Edmund Leach: Culture and Communication: the logic by which symbols are connected: an introduction to the use of structuralist analysis in social anthropology Anthony Heath: Rational choice and social exchange: a critique of exchange theory P. Abrams and A. McCulloch: Communes, sociology and society Jack Goody: The domestication of the savage mind Jean-Louis Flandrin: Families in former times: kinship, household and sexuality John Dunn: Theory in the face of the future David Thomas: Naturalism and social science: a post-empiricist philosophy of social science Claude Meillassoux: Maidens, meal and money: capitalism and the domestic community David Lane: Leninism: a sociological interpretation Anthony D. Smith: The ethnic revival Jack Goody: Cooking, cuisine and class: a study in comparative sociology Roy Ellen: Environment, subsistence and system: the ecology of small-scale formations S. N. Eisenstadt and L. Roniger: Patrons, clients and friends: Interpersonal relations and the structure of trust in society John Dunn: The politics of socialism: an essay in political theory Martine Segalen: Historical anthropology of the family Tim Ingold: Evolution and social life David Levine: Reproducing families: the political economy of English population history Robert Hinde: Individuals, relationships and culture: links between ethology and the social sciences Paul Connerton: How societies remember

Demystifying mentalities G. E. R. LLOYD Darwin College, Cambridge The right of the University of Cambridge to print and sell all manner of books was granted by Henry VIII in 1534. The University has printed and published continuously since 1584. CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge New York Port Chester Melbourne Sydney

Published by the Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, CB2 1RP 32 East 57th Street, New York, NY 10022, USA 10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia © Cambridge University Press 1990 First published 1990 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Lloyd, G. E. R. (Geoffrey Ernest Richard) Demystifying mentalities. - (themes in the social sciences) 1. Man. cognition. Psychological aspects I. title II. Series 153.4 Library of Congress cataloguing in publication data Lloyd, G. E. R. (Geoffrey Ernest Richard), 1933- Demystifying mentalities / G. E. R. Lloyd, p. cm. - (Themes in the social sciences). Bibliography. ISBN 0 521 36661 5. ISBN 0 521 36680 1 (paperback) 1. Belief and doubt - Cross-cultural studies. 2. Evidence - Cross-cultural studies. 3. Cognition and culture. 4. Science - History. I. Title. II. Title: Mentalities. III. Series. BF773.L66 1990 303.372 - dc20 89-9788 CIP ISBN 0 521 36661 5 hardback ISBN 0 521 36680 1 paperback Transferred to digital printing 2002

Contents Note on texts and references page vi Acknowledgements vii Introduction 1 1 Mentalities, metaphors and the foundations of science 14 2 Magic and science, ancient and modern 39 3 The conception and practice of proof 73 Supplementary note: geometry and 'proof in Vedic ritual 98 4 A test case: China and Greece, comparisons and contrasts 105 Conclusion: mentalities demystified 135 Notes 146 Bibliography 157 Index 171

Note on texts and references I cite the major Greek and Latin authors by standard editions, for example the works of Plato according to Burners Oxford text, the treatises of Aristotle according to Bekker's Berlin edition, the fragments of the Presocratic philosophers according to the edition of Diels, revised by Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 6th ed. (Berlin, 1952). Greek and Latin medical texts are cited, for preference, according to the Corpus Medicorum Graecorum and Corpus Medicorum Latinorum editions. Thus for the Hippocratic treatises On Ancient Medicine, On the Art I use CMG 11, for On Airs Waters Places CMG 11, 2, and On the Nature of Man CMG 11, 3. But for Hippocratic treatises not included in that edition I use E. Littre, Oeuvres completes d'Hippocrate, 10 vols., Paris, 1839-61. Thus On Regimen in Acute Diseases is cited by chapter and page of vol. 2 of Littre, On Fractures similarly from vol. 3, On joints from vol. 4, On the Places in Man and On the Sacred Disease from vol. 6 and On the Diseases of Women from vol. 8. The translations of Chinese works that I use are cited by the translator's name and the year of the translation. These, together with all the modern books and articles similarly cited, are to be found listed on the biblio- graphy on pp. 157. VI

Acknowledgements To acknowledge what this book owes to audiences, correspondents and specialist advisers is no mere matter of formality. Each of the four main chapters originates in lectures and seminars I gave during 1985-7 and my first debt is to those who participated in the discussion on those occasions or who corresponded with me afterwards. I had the honour to be invited to deliver the Rivers lecture in Cambridge in 1985, the Frazer lecture in Oxford, and the Nancy Wilson lecture in Southampton in 1987, and to give a series of lectures and seminars at Peking University and at the Institute of the History of Science of Academia Sinica at Beijing later in the same year. In a real sense this study is a collaborative work, and if I alone take responsibility for its final shape, the ideas it contains largely derive from many different contexts of joint discussion and exploration of the problems. I have, too, expressly sought, and have most generously been given, advice and criticism both on the overall strategy of my arguments, and on specialised points, from a large number of friends and colleagues. For social anthropological and historical advice I wish to thank Peter Burke, Ernest Gellner, Jack Goody, Francois Hartog, Mark Hobart, Stephen Hugh-Jones, Caroline Humphrey, the late Sir Edmund Leach, Alan Macfarlane, Rodney Needham, Dan Sperber and especially Tanya Luhr- mann (who has allowed me to draw extensively on her unpublished as well as published field work). Among those who have helped me on sinological problems have been Karine Chemla, Christopher Cullen, Jacques Gernet, Catherine Jami, Michael Loewe, Joseph Needham, Nathan Sivin and Donald Wagner in the West, and Zhen Li, Du Shiran, Xi Zezong, Mei Rongzhao and their colleagues and students at Peking University and the Institute of the History of Natural Science of the Academia Sinica at Beijing. To Karine Chemla and to Nathan Sivin especially, both of whom gave me the benefit of particularly detailed comments on earlier drafts of chapter 4,1 owe special thanks: their advice vii

Acknowledgemen ts both prompted many new lines of inquiry and saved me from many errors, while of course they bear no responsibility for those that remain. I have benefited too from the constructive comments on issues to do with Greco-Roman antiquity from Simon Goldhill, Oswyn Murray, Catherine and Robin Osborne, and on problems in the interpretation of Sanskrit materials from Peter Khoroche. Finally it is a pleasure to thank my hosts and the organising committees of the Rivers, Frazer and Nancy Wilson lectures, and again my Chinese hosts and Peking University, Academia Sinica and the British Academy for organising my visit to China in 1987 and for making my stay there so stimulating and enjoyable. GERL Cambridge, March 1989 vin

Introduction The general problem that this book addresses concerns the validity and usefulness of the notion of mentalities. This has often been used to characterise what is held to be distinctive about the thought processes or sets of beliefs of groups or of whole societies, in general or at particular periods of time, and again in describing the changes or transformations that such processes or sets of beliefs are considered to have undergone. In what circumstances, if any, is it helpful or at least legitimate to invoke the notion of a distinct mentality? How, without some such notion, can major differences not just in the content of specific ideas and beliefs, but between whole networks of them, be described and understood? Yet while the partisans of mentalities, influenced by a variety of arguments, hold that some such notion is indispensable, others have questioned its appropriateness or applicability or condemned its apparent extravagance. How the explananda themselves are to be described is as much in dispute as the explanations on offer. The French sociologist Lucien Levy-Bruhl secured a wide diffusion for the notion of mentalities, in particular in connection with his ill-starred hypothesis of a prelogical mentality. This was supposed to be a feature of much primitive thought and one that helped to establish a contrast between it and the logical or scientific mentality to be found in advanced civilisations and especially in his own society. As is well known, Levy- Bruhl himself came to renounce that hypothesis explicitly in the Note- books written towards the end of his life in 1938-9.l However it is important to note how much of his earlier positions he retained even when doing so. He continued to talk, throughout the Notebooks, of differences in mentalities, and in particular continued to wrestle with the problem of defining and refining his ideas about what he still calls the primitive mentality. But where in his earlier work he had differentiated this by means of two criteria, that is as (1) prelogical and (2) mystical, in the Notebooks he abandoned the first while retaining the second. Thus he 1

Introduction wrote that the prelogical 'appears henceforth as another aspect or rather as a natural consequence of the mystical (Levy-Bruhl 1975, p. 37, cf also pp. 101, 126). Two further important features of Levy-Bruhl's discussion of this issue in the Notebooks should also be remarked. First he insisted on 'the fundamental identity of the structure of all human minds', a belief he maintains he had always held (p. 39). What precisely this encompassed was left rather vague, and the illustrations he gave showed that he had in mind very general characteristics indeed. All human minds, he went on, are 'capable of reasoning, of speaking, of counting, etc.' and elsewhere he put it that 'the logical structure of the mind is the same in all known human societies, just as they all have a language, customs and institu- tions' (p. 49, cf also p. 55). Secondly, he now conceded that traces of the mystical mentality can be found in societies other than primitive ones. Indeed it is 'present in every human mind', even though it is 'more marked and more easily observable among "primitive peoples" than in our own societies' (p. 101, cf also pp. 104, 125f.). But although he rejected prelogicality and came to recognise some of the problems connected with demarcating mentalities (pp. 99f.), he still did not abandon the notion of a mystical mentality found especially in primi- tive societies (let alone abandon talk of mentalities as such) even while he tried various formulations to capture its distinctive characteristics.2 Thus he modified the claim that it is characterised by a tolerance of contradiction, but retained the idea that it tolerates incompatibilities (pp. 74, 86f. and especially 125ff., 136ff., specifying 'physical', not logical, absurdities). Again he retreated on the matter of the claim that there was some underly- ing law of participation (pp. 60f., 92) though he continued to insist that participation is a fundamental feature of the primitive mentality. Thus he put it that 'for the primitive mentality to be is to participate', glossing this with: 'it does not represent to itself things whose existence it conceives without bringing in elements other than the things themselves' (p. 18). Again while he continued to claim that primitive mentality is affective (pp. 90f., 127ff., 158f.), he modified what he had to say about its lack of concepts. He rejected his earlier statement that 'primitive mentality is not conceptual' as too general (p. 127), and substituted: 'the thought of primitive men is not conceptual like ours [. ..] Neither the laws of nature, nor the forms of living things play in their thought a role comparable with that which they do in our thought, at least as soon as it is a question of a mystical experience or a magical operation.'3 Although Levy-Bruhl's ideas met with a good

تُعرض الأصوات المحلية المثبتة على جهازك فقط. إذا لم يظهر صوت عربي، أضفه من إعدادات الجهاز.