Without Walls: Culture Seeps Into Science Unbidden
Author(s)
De Waal, Frans B. M.
Abstract
As far back as 1952, when early European ethologists were working on instinct theories, Imanishi wrote a little book that criticised the view of animals as mindless automatons. He inserted an imaginary debate between a wasp, a monkey, an evolutionist and a layman, in which the possibility was raised that animals other than ourselves might have culture. Yet it’s only a few decades since professors in the West used to warn primatology students against the atheoretical approach, the anthropomorphism and the general lack of relevance of papers by Japanese colleagues. How could a field of science be shaped so profoundly by one culture’s outlook, especially given the condescending way in which the Japanese perspective was initially treated? And how could this happen with so few people realising it? The answer to the first question is that, as we’ve seen, Eastern science had no affection for traditional Western human/animal and nature/culture dualisms. The answer to the second question lies in language. It is hard for non-English speakers to make themselves heard in an English-speaking world.
