Science of the Concrete

Raw Nature vs The Categorization of Nature:

In the Science of the Concrete, Strauss points out that the intimate knowledge the primitives have of their environments does not just extend from that which is connected to survival - they develop intimate understanding of the world around them through experiential engagement. Levi-Strauss cites example after example of idiosyncratically complex taxonomic schemes devised by “primitive” cultures around the world.

“[A]nimals and plants are not known as a result of their usefulness; they are deemed to be useful or interesting because they are first of all known. It may be objected that science of this kind can scarcely be of much practical effect. The answer to this is that its main purpose is not a practical one. It meets intellectual requirements rather than or instead of satisfying needs.”

If we define a genuinely scientific attitude as a desire for knowledge for it's own sake, there are countless examples of observations and experiments in primitive cultures which lead to cultivated plants, pottery, fuels, poison - these must be careful and almost science like discoveries.

He uses the example of the craftsman (bricoleur) and the Engineer (one who relies on the ideas behind the matarial). The Bricoleur approximates "the savage mind" and the Engineer approximates the scientific mind. The craftsman uses the tools at hand and develops an intimate vocabulary around those tools - putting preexisting things together in new ways. The engineer creates new tools and meanings, by considering a set of theoretical understanding or principles which one might call science.

But the engineer demonstrates the principles - or understands them through engagement with the material. And the engineer works within the constraints of his principles (the history of his ideas)

Mythological thought is a type of intellectual bricolage - it expresses itself as adaptations of speculative observation that made sense to preserve as stories. They are principles of reflection that in action have very practical use. Mythology takes the debris of social discourse and constructs ideological castles based on the remains of events - building structures up by fitting together events. It orders and re-orders the events to find meaning in them..

Science creates it's results and principles in the form of events - by fitting those events into hypothesis and theories. So in a sense the practice of both is similar:

Scientists create events (change the world) by means of structures - and bricoleurs (myth-makers) create structures by means of events.

Sherry Turkle's work relates to this in that:
We start with ideas instead of materials - therefore reinforcing our ideas in how we tell our ideas. But if we start with materials we can be myth-makers - we can discover the "magic" and mystery in the world around us, and then allow the structures of science to help us correlate our myths... the cycle between mythmaker and scientist - is the creative practice of the artist - he says:

"Art lies half-way between scientific knowledge and mythological or magical thought. The artist constructs a material object that is also one of knowledge. Thus one might infer that an artist must find inspiration in the material world, and the world of ideas - cycling back and forth between a world of language, and that of phenomenological experience.

He argues that the same force demanding order is what motivates the primitive and the scientific minds - and they are not so radically different from each other. Myth and magic postulate an all-embracing "determinism" - whereas science is based on a distinction between levels -- so in a sense what is his saying is that magical rites and beliefs could be seen as acts of faith in science yet to be born!

Games and Rites (Rituals) are compared at the end of the article to help deepen his point about the blurred distinction between knowing by the concrete and knowing through structure. Games propose a structure and produce events as a result of that structure, like science. This may explain their popularity in capitalist society. Rituals and myths construct and reconstruct events (on many planes) and use them to create structural patterns which serve alternative means (such as mourning, or joining together a group, or inspiring desire) - which may in the end be the fuel which brings one to the sciences.