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Atran's biodiversity parser: Doubts about hierarchy and autonomy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 1998

Eugene S. Hunn
Eugene S. Hunn
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195-3100 hunn@u.washington.edu
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Abstract

Atran argues that an autonomous ethnobiological information-processing module exists. This module imputes a “deep causal essence” to folk-biological taxa and uses a hierarchy of taxonomic ranks. I argue that Atran's own data suggest that rank is not an essential feature of the ethnobiological module, and that ethnobiological causal essences may be generalized to other domains and vice versa, limiting its autonomy.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 21 , Issue 4 , August 1998 , pp. 576 - 577
Copyright
© 1998 Cambridge University Press

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