Why are perfect animals, hybrids, and monsters food for symbolic thought?

Work on animal symbolism, in particular that of Mary Douglas, suggests that the symbolic value of some animals is grounded in taxonomic anomaly. Yet the work of ethno-zoologists tends to show that folk-taxonomies are consistent and devoid of true anomalies. This raises a first problem. Moreover, not only anomalous animals, but also exemplary animals often take on a symbolic value, thus raising a second problem. A solution to both problems is suggested, based on an examination of the cognitive organization of folk-taxonomies, and with illustrations drawn from Ethiopian, Biblical, and Western culture. Foreword (1995). Here is how this article came about. When working on what was to become Le Symbolisme en Général (1974; in English, Rethinking Symbolism, 1975a), I wrote two sections, one on rhetoric, the other on animal symbolism, that I had initially intended for the book. Both, however, became too large, and were published as separate articles (Sperber 1975b, c). In 1980, I prepared a revised English version of the article on animal symbolism for a collection of French anthropological papers commissioned by Cambridge University Press, which, in the end, never came out. An Italian version of this text was published in 1986 as a separate booklet. A year or so ago, I mentioned the paper in conversation with Thomas Lawson; he mentioned it to the editors of Method and Theory in the Study of Religion who kindly offered, after all these years, to publish the English version. I did not have the modesty and good sense to say no. The main point of the article a point with which I am still in agreement is that an understanding of animal symbolism should be firmly grounded in an account of the manner in which zoological knowledge is organized. Another important point, guiding the whole paper and stressed in the conclusion, which, I believe, anticipated recent developments at the boundary of the cognitive and the social sciences (see Hirschfeld and Gelman 1994, Tooby and Cosmides 1992), is that the conceptual organization of the zoological domain does not merely follow general principle of conceptual organization but rather exhibits domain-specific features, as do other conceptual domains. The idea that our conceptual knowledge is organized differently in different domains has far-reaching implications, including in the study of religion (see Boyer 1993). The paper attempts to develop these two points by discussing in turn categorization, and symbolism. I was unaware, when writing this paper, of the major developments that were, just then, taking place in the psychological study of categorization (see Smith and Medin 1981, Medin 1989, Smith in press, for an account of these, and later developments in the field). The "classical" view of mental concepts, according to which concepts are mentally defined in terms of a set of individually necessary and jointly sufficient features, was being challenged in the work of Eleanor Rosch (1978) and others. New probabilistic approaches were emerging, according to which concepts are characterized in terms of prototypes, and items are likely to fall under a concept to the extent that they resemble the relevant prototype. The opposition between the classical view, and probabilistic views spawned a hybrids and monsters http://sperber.club.fr/hybrids.htm 1 sur 23 09/09/2009 11:29 wealth of new research. For a while, the probabilistic views seemed to be absolute winners, but then they too met with objections, both theoretical and empirical. Yet another approach emerged, according to which a concept is based on a "theory" of the objects that fall under it. In particular, the concept of a living kind is based on the idea that each living kind has some specific underlying essence. The view of categorization I was putting forward in the present paper might have seemed obsolete in 1980, when prototypes were carrying the day. However, now, a charitable reading might see it as having been ahead of its time in some respects. Retrospectively, I should not have talked of semantic and encyclopaedic "definitions," but of semantic features and of theories, and I trust the reader will update the terminology. On the substantive side, however, I had argued that animal kinds were taken to possess their properties (e.g. the tiger its stripes) by nature, and that, when a given property was not manifested in a given individual animal, it was nevertheless virtually there. This anticipated today's "psychological essentialism." Even so, the view of categorization I was sketching was very rudimentary and poorly informed. My main motive of pride in this respect is that this paper, together with many conversations we had at the time, may have encouraged Scott Atran to develop his outstanding work on living kinds categorization, approached from a combined cognitive, historical and anthropological perspective (see in particular Atran 1990). My treatment of animal symbolism was intended as an illustration of the general view of cultural symbolism I had articulated in Rethinking Symbolism, and took the form of a discussion of Mary Douglas's deservedly influential views in the matter. What I find not uninteresting in retrospect was my attempt to find a unified account of the symbolism of perfect animals, hybrids and monsters. This is a sensible goal for the study of animal symbolism, in particular in the religious context, even if the solution I offered was at best sketchy. In general, however, I am struck by my naivete in believing that cognitive psychology as it was at the time allowed a clear understanding of the cognitive bases of symbolism. The cognitive sciences have enormously progessed since the mid 70s (and I am much less ignorant than I was), but there is still a huge way to go. My present feeling is that we are just begining to be in a position to properly articulate the questions which I saw myself as answering (see Kelly, M. & F.C. Keil 1985, for an example of recent relevant cognitive research). Relevant to a better articulation of the problem is, I believe, my later work on the "epidemiology of representations" (Sperber 1985, 1990, 1994), and the work I have done with Deirdre Wilson on communication and cognition under the label "relevance theory" (Sperber and Wilson 1986/1995). My involvement in this latter work, incidentally, came out of the article on rhetoric which I had written at the same time as the one on animal symbolism, and initially intended as a section of Rethinking Symbolism. I myself have not done more work on animal symbolism, but I have been led to deepen my understanding of the issues through the work already mentioned of Scott Atran (1990), and of Pascal Boyer (1993). What follows is my 1980 English revised version of my 1975 article, with only minor stylistic changes. I am grateful to Thomas Lawson and to Russell McCutcheon for the chance of seeing this old manuscript come out of the drawer. I just hope it is not too, too dusty.