Cognition around the world

Die Welt des Denkens: Kognitive Einheit, kulturelle Vielfalt, may be translated as “The world of thinking: cognitive unity, cultural diversity.” It represents an impressive and much needed effort in German at bringing together insights from psychology and socio-cultural anthropology about how people around the globe perceive and order the world and how they feel and reason about the world surrounding them. The book is extraordinary in both scope and depth, it is lucidly written and, thanks to its thoughtful structure, it is accessible for a broad audience. Eight areas that mental activity is directed at are addressed in particular: (1) color perception (2) the classification of plants and animals (3) logical reasoning (4) counting and calculating (5) spatial reasoning (6) reasoning about time (6) navigating the sea (7) social cognition and perspective taking (8) emotions. The different areas are treated in distinct chapters, preceded by an introduction outlining the scholarly study of cognition and culture and giving an overview of the book, and followed by a comprehensive conclusion and three different indices, including one on “countries, languages, and cultures.” Very much in the style of a textbook, the individual chapters all follow a similar structure. They provide information on a cognitive phenomenon, first detailing what is known about it from aWestern psychological or natural science perspective, and then putting this in relation with studies that may roughly be grouped as appertaining to the field of cognitive anthropology. The latter focus on how people in remote places of the world approach the same issue. As one might expect the respective results look quite different. The authors then engage with this difference and draw conclusions about the way culture and cognition interact. This is supplemented with a one page info box detailing general ethnographic knowledge about the specific society that appears to do this or that differently. In addition, each paragraph is complemented with keywords in the margins, pointing to the main information presented. The chapters are concluded with two service sections: one offering tasks or thought experiments that the reader may perform, the other providing suggestions for further reading. We learn, for example, that the Tarahumara in Mexico use only one term to denote blue and green (siyó), and that the Inca, rather than using a script, used a highly differentiated notation system (quipu) of strings and knots to calculate and archive numerical knowledge concerning the community. We also learn that Australian Aborigines have a nearly perfect sense of direction in vast places such as the desert, where non-Aborigines would hardly find their way. This seems to result from a preference for an absolute frame of reference according to north, east, south and west rather than a relative one (as in “left,” “right”), which is also reflected in language and gesture. In addition, they orient themselves according to specificities in the landscape, which are laden with cultural memories. Samoa, then, is given as an example of a place where people refrain from overt speculation about the thoughts and feelings of others, which in turn has consequences for the way causality and accountability are explained. The authors come to the conclusion that no clear-cut picture can be drawn as to the exact interrelation of culture and cognition. This is to do with difficulties in the methodological comparability of studies, the lack of studies addressing similar questions about people in different parts of the world, and generally the sheer scope of the problem, i.e., what aspect of cognition in relation to what aspect of culture is being addressed. Some circumstances are described as consequential, however. Cultural preferences and environmental requirements seem to create differences in the ways people categorize, quantify and explain the world, and in how they orient themselves in the world. Also, schooling and literacy seem to have a strong influence on the ways in which the world is classified and causality is explained; furthermore, many recent and more refined studies support the old argument that language influences thought and perception (as in spatial reasoning). Overall, the authors argue that many differences in reasoning activity point to differences in quantity rather than quality, i.e., that the cognitive abilities are indeed universal but used in various styles, intensities and at different