IOANNIS KYRIAKAKIS

WESTERN COSMOLOGY, ANTHROPOLOGY AND CAPITALISM

ABSTRACT: In this article I am attempting an analysis of the term “cosmology” and its content as we use it within anthropology. I am suggesting three basic components of every cosmology: 1.cosmogony: how the world started, 2.ontology: what creatures and elements the world consists of and 3.basic principle/direction: how the world works and/or where the world is heading to. I, then, investigate these basic components within western cosmology by comparing two main western traditions, science and Christianity. After reaching the conclusion that western cosmology owes its ontological construction neither to science nor to the so called ‘Judeo-Christian’tradition but to a historical synthesis between the two traditions which is based on their hierarchical and divided by class (upper and lower, civilized and savage) common characteristics, I end up with presenting its basic principle: the conception of a limitless cosmos. Finally I am suggesting that this cosmological principle is a supporting pillar of capitalism par excellence.

KEY WORDS: Western cosmology, science, Christianity, civilized and uncivilized class division, limitless world, capitalism.

WESTERN COSMOLOGY, ANTHROPOLOGY AND CAPITALISM.

Introduction

The aim of this article is to present the concept of cosmology as it is used within anthropology, to launch a critical attempt of applying this concept to Western culture and finally to present the new directions this application offers to our understanding of capitalism. I pay specific attention of the role social science and

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especially anthropology plays for such an understanding. More precisely I maintain that as far as science, and social science in particular, is essential part of western cosmology and western cosmology is very tightly intertwined with capitalism, radical revisions in conception and conduct of social science are needed so that a critical stance against capitalism can be achieved. I start with a presentation of the concept of cosmology, I continue with an attempt to answer the question “which is exactly the western cosmology” and finally I explore the implications between social scienceand capitalism. The argument of this article is that we cannot fight capitalism with the theoretical, political and social tools which were made for its very legitimacy,maintenance and reproduction in the first place. Since this argument may sound too political, its academic implication is the following: What at a first glance seems as neutral or even critical to capitalism, such as social science and academic anthropology, is in fact a supporting pillar for it, if we think in cosmological terms.

What is cosmology?

A definition of cosmology is not as hard as it seems to be. At least, it is not as hard as a definition of ‘culture’ or ‘society’ or ‘religion’. The reason is that the term “cosmology” is not metaphoric like ‘culture’, itis not as abstract and vague as ‘society’, and it is not that historically and ideologically disputed like ‘religion’. In fact ‘cosmology’ as a term is exactly whatit claims to be: the ‘logos’ about ‘cosmos’. The two Greek words are not that ambiguous. ‘Logos’ means ‘the word’ or more broadly ‘the discussion’ or ‘the discourse’(and that is why the ending ‘-logy’ is fixed in all descriptive and analytic disciplines in the west as opposed to the more experimental and practical disciplines of medicine, physics, chemistry and

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mathematics). Cosmology then, is at first a description, a narrative. ‘Cosmos’ on the other hand means ‘the world’or ‘the universe’, therefore whatever exists before and beyond the senses, within and without beings including humans. By sticking to the origin of the term then, I suggest that we can define cosmology as the discussion orthe narrative about the world. This discussion includes first the origin of the world, the so-called ‘cosmogony’,second what the world is made of, that is the beings the world contains and the way they interact with each other,the so-called ‘ontology’ (in this I include also a possible hierarchy among them), and third, a potential “movement” of the world either linear or cyclic towards an end or towards itself.

This sort of cosmology’s (very) rough analysis recalls the discussion of cosmology Gregory Schrempp attempts in his book Magical Arrows (1992) but it is not identical with it. Schrempp lays emphasis on cosmogony (as relatively neglected by the usual focus of structuralism on myths – see Schrempp Chapters 2 and 3) and he reaches the conclusion that cosmogony entails the “basic principles” of each cosmology. In his own words:

Separation in the Arawa cosmogony1 has roughly the same “plot” significance as the first disobedience in the second (“J”) Creation story in the Book of Genesis (the Garden of Eden story [2:4b-3:24]). . . It is as if it is just assumed that whatever principle enters through such focused events will fill up the cosmos. One can see this same pattern in different kinds of principles, for example, structural, moral,material. A great part of the overall concern of thecomposer of “J” Genesis account appears to have beenthe moral nature of man and the cosmos. In his cosmogonic formulation, once there is knowledge of good and evil, the world is suddenly and thereafter

1 Arawa cosmogony consists in the separation between earth and sky, which prior to the beginning of the world were united. All natural and spiritual beings are then positioned in the world according to their stance against this primordial separation as it was unfolded (this is only a very rough description for the purposes of this paperonly-for further details look at the Schrempp’s book).

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full of the opposition of GOOD AND EVIL-that is whatthe rest of the story is about. One can see that Arawa account as handling its own particular obsession in a similar way: the first separation is attained, and immediately the cosmos fills up with SEPARATION. (Italics are mine, Capital letters are Schrempp’s - Schrempp 1992:96)

The integrative and cohesive character of cosmology. The “ontological turn” in anthropology

From the line of argument presented so far emanates a cohesive and integrative character of cosmology. Cohesivein the sense that origin, composition and direction of “cosmos” constitute a single narrative and provide evidence to a unified cosmos, and integrative, in the sense that foreign elements, alien ontologies or disturbing details of common sense that disagree with cosmological evidence tend to be assimilated, interpreted, accepted or rejected according to the cosmology’s basic features. Viewed from such an angle ‘cosmology’ can prove itself operational in the anthropological endeavour for cultural comparison. In fact this has been the case for decades with various ethnographies which use the term cosmology in order to describe indigenous belief systems. However, many find problematic to use the same term for the industrial west.In a meeting with Mary Douglas (mentioned by Abramson andHolbraad-2012), which I had the privilege to attend at the -then called- ‘cosmology group’ at UCL in 2006, Mary Douglas posed the question ‘can we say that we (meaning the anthropologists) have a cosmology’? She immediately gave the answer: ‘No! We cannot have a cosmology’. By theterm ‘cosmology’ Mary Douglas, apparently, meant something else than what I have defined above. She, apparently, meant a specific set of cultural beliefs and ideological positions that lead a researcher to mar her/his ‘objectivity’. It was this current of post (and cold by the way)-war liberal, humanist anthropologists, who Mary Douglas represented, that advocated a liberal,

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humanist and value-free anthropology. According to them no anthropologist can be pro- or against a specific belief-system. According to the post-colonial (Asad 1973) and post-modern (Clifford and Fischer 1986) critique, however, there can be no neutrality in social science, and the so called value-free anthropology has been in fact the western, industrial and culturally prejudiced anthropology.

The definition of cosmology I gave in the previous section opposes, as well, Mary Douglas’s line of reasoning. That is due to the fact that no one can live without a cosmology. There is no human being, educated orilliterate, at any place and time with no belief about the origin, the composition and the direction of the world. Consider all myths and tales adults recite to young children. They all connect one way or another to origin, composition and direction of the cosmos. And evenwhen, in the history of humanity, family and craft apprenticeship are replaced by religious education and later when religion is replaced by secular schools, what is the basic content of learning? Isn’t it how the universe was built, what it is made of and how it works? And what it is even more important, isn’t it the “basic cosmological principle” (good and evil, earth and sky, the survival of the fittest, whatever) that fills up all the stories taught and told, all the teaching processes, and all the structures and all the institutions with content and meaning?

Is then cosmology with such a deep and generalizing effect, another word for culture? This brings in mind thefamous Manchester debate (Carrithers et al. 2010) in 2008, which I also had the privilege to attend. The debate was about ‘ontology’ though, not ‘cosmology’. To say that ontology is another word for culture is temptingbut still not accurate. There is no such a desperate needfor definitions and confusions when the definitions are already there. For ‘culture’ we have already a fairly satisfying definition, which roughly justifies the anthropological discipline’s general project rather well.Hoebel gave it back in 1966 (Hoebel 1966) and it reads

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that “culture is everything that is taught to people fromgeneration to generation and it is not biologically inherited”. It is a good definition because it describes adequately what we anthropologists study and do. Culture for us then is all practice, skills, habits, morals, beliefs, institutions and knowledge that members of a human group are taught by childhood in order to participate in and reproduce themselves within the group as well as to support the group’s survival and reproduction against the environment both natural and other-human. Ontology on the other hand in my definition is part of cosmology. It concerns all “what is there” as Paolo Heywood notes after philosopher W.V.Quine in his polemical article against the supporters of the so called‘ontological turn’ in anthropology (Heywood 2012:144). Although ontology may be a confusing term when used outside a specific context, it becomes quite clear, in myopinion, when we take it as a basic component of cosmology. A general and coherent notion/view/living experience/understanding of the cosmos, necessarily includes the creatures that live in it, the several and diverse “beings” (“onta” in Greek), their status and potential ranking that is, their interrelationships too. This plus their origin and direction (basic principle) constitute cosmology. Ontology then is the composition ofthe cosmos: “what there is”.

The discussion about ontology within anthropology becomes much clearer, when one reveals its context, and in fact, its motive. The big issue is the existence or non-existence of gods and spirits encountered very often by anthropologists in the field, and how we deal with them. This is a very long-long discussion in anthropologylasting for more than 150 years now! The epistemological and ethical problem it deals with is how a non-believer (in ghosts, spirits, gods etc.), that is the anthropologist as a public figure, a “professional”, (andnot as a person-recall Mary Douglas’ claim above), can study and interpret a believer, that is the ‘informant’ without imposing his/her own world-view and distorting the informant’s one. As said above the old fashioned positivists solved the problem by admitting that there is

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just one world but several cultural understandings of it,while science must stand above culture. The problem with this approach is that by posing science outside culture we replace the old gods with science. The consequence is that what exists and what does not exist is decided by science, but accidentally science as a tradition is prominent only in the industrial western world. It is as if we do not mind different opinions provided that it is us who take the decision on which of them is right and which is wrong, which is real and which is only a productof imagination. The so-called ‘ontological turn’ is in fact another episode of this long debate. It stresses theimportance of “beings” themselves instead of to ideas about them, and thus it rules out our jurisdiction on deciding about their existence or non-existence. The problem that remains is how we study these beings. To me,it looks a little bit elliptic and inadequate to be concerned only with beings and not with how and why beings are there in the first place. Ontology (in its anthropological- and not analytical philosophical-sense) corresponds to an entire system of interconnection among beings, serves an entire series of purposes, emotions, motives and meanings that fill individual and collective lives with their moral content. That is why I prefer the term cosmology instead of ontology as more operational for anthropological critique.

Incommensurability between cosmologies and the problem of“truth”.

One has to wonder why the notion of culture has been developed only in the Euro-American modern part of the world. The answer to this question is not that hard to give for anthropologists, and this is a very much debatedissue in anthropology too, very little, however, conveyedto wider audiences. As many have shown, but at this pointI will refer only to Marshal Sahlins who offers a comprehensive overview on the issue (Sahlins, the Western

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Illusion of Human Nature, 2008): The great interest in “culture” owes its presence, prominence and intensity in the contemporary world to the celebrated separation between nature and culture achieved only in the social imaginary of the modern West. The separation between nature and culture is a constitutive part of western cosmology. In fact this is something distinctive that characterizes western cosmology in comparison to all others.

As Sahlins shows in his aforementioned book the separation between nature and culture presupposes a pretty wild, untamed and in fact threatening conception of nature. As far as part of nature also lies within human beings in the form of instincts and other biological traits, the battle against the savage instincts that threaten the peace and unity of human societies it is the milestone of civilization. The acceptance that nature, and human nature in particular, is something wild that needs to be tamed or suppressed, constitutes a break with older and distant notions of nature as something we have to imitate, reach, follow, respect or worship but in no way to conquer, exploit and,or suppress. Referring to these notions Sahlins stresses out that according to them humans, by nature, are innocent, immature and weak instead of wicked, ferocious and evil, and in that sense they need to let their instincts to grow instead of suppressing them (Sahlins 2008: 88-92). What is more interesting for the topic investigated here, is the notion of nature as basically human-like, so common in non- western, non-industrial cultures that Sahlins recites. In simple words, accordingto many pre-industrial cultures and societies human systems preceded human beings as we know them, in the form of animals and plants. Plants and animals are humanslike us, with the difference that they are older and wiser than we are. Wilderness is more human rather than humans are wild. The question is if and how these two conflicting if not opposing conceptions of universal order can live together.

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Don Handelman, in his article “Returning to Cosmology-Thoughts on the positioning of belief” (2008:181), writesabout a conversation he had with a North-American shaman who once told him: ‘You don’t know what I am talking about, and the same is true for anybody who reads this thing you write. What is real for me isnot real for you’. It is inevitable that certain cosmologies are incommensurable with other certain cosmologies. Where, however, can we situate this incommensurability? When somebody, for example, is convinced that the world is determined by the conflict between good and evil, it is really hard to follow a cosmology where everything is determined by the separation between earth and sky (The separation of Arawa that Schrempp talked about in his book). This, however, does not mean that good and evil are not categories familiar to her/him. They simply do not constitute the basic cosmological principle. Unless the two principles can encompass each-other, when the issue then is just an issue of priority, we talk of incommensurability. In our example, when evil can be partof the earth and good part of the sky, or the other way round, then the two cosmologies are commensurable, compatible, symmetrical. The “truth” of one cosmology does not exclude the “truth” of the other. On the contrary they can be mutually complementary to each other.

As Michael Scott (2007 -Introduction) has shown in his ethnography of the Arosi in Solomon Islands, there are certain aspects of moral principles of Arosi people whichoverlap with Christian cosmology. However these are not their basic cosmological principles in the sense I stressed in the relevant section, rather than secondary effects of their basic ‘poly-ontologic’, as Scott notes, cosmology. Therefore, incommensurability is not a simple problem when we discuss cosmology. The point here is thatnot all cosmologies are incommensurable to other cosmologies to the extent that they do not deny (note here the double negation) their “truth”. This non-denial may occur in two ways: Either the alien cosmology overlaps with part of the native one, and thus it can be encompassed by it, or it does not, but it refers to a cosmos outside the borders of the native cosmos.

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Therefore it is true for the cosmos it refers to. Apparently this was the way cosmologies treated each other (note here the personification of cosmologies, as if they were subjects) before the invention of scientific‘truth’ (which stands above culture in the hierarchy of concepts, as I will show below). At this point I have to note: When I am talking of incommensurability I mean the same thing as the North American shaman. When what is real for me is not real for you, and we are talking about the same cosmos, then our cosmologies are incommensurable to each other.

Handelman’s paper mentioned above and another one, written by Sahlins (1996) on the “native anthropology of western cosmology”, were discussed in the “cosmology” group at UCL in 2006 and 2007 respectively, and I was lucky to be present in both sessions (see Abramson and Holbraad 2012 about this group). My comment on both papers, as I saw it then, was that despite their valuablecontributions they failed to define which exactly the “western cosmology” is. I still see it the same way. Theydealt only with the elective affinity ‘Judeo-Christian tradition’ bears to modern western cosmology without saying what this cosmology exactly is about, which is itsbasic principle, in one or at least in three sentences (remember: cosmogony, ontology, movement or else ‘basic principle’). They instead implied that Judeo-Christian tradition in fact is majorly responsible for western cosmology without defining either of the two parts of theequation. Apparently it is taken for granted that we are all familiar with both ‘Judeo-Christianity’ and western cosmology, and further definitions are not needed. A similar lack of definitions characterises also a very recent article on cosmology by Abramson and Holbraad (2012) despite their remarkable effort to situate westerncosmology in the conception of a unified, simple world asopposed to the multiple worlds of pre-modern cultures. They still do not tell us what exactly western cosmology in general is about. They rather describe one of its aspects or effects.

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To be fair, though, Sahlins is much more thorough in hispresentation of western cosmology. He refers to the centrality of man and his needs (Sahlins 1996:397) and hestresses the compatibility between basic ‘Judeo-Christian’ motifs and modern biology and capitalism. However, this description is far from orienting a ‘cosmos’ and what it contains. It is a description of ‘function’ without ontology. Sahlins describes how western cosmology works, but not what and how it is made of. He forgets to include cosmogony and ontology in his model, probably taking it for granted. Therefore he forgets to mention the non- ‘-logy’ disciplines of western-tradition: chemistry, physics, mathematics, medicine etc. etc. (an omission that philosophers of science, in contrast to anthropologists never allow themselves to commit).

Sahlins and Handelman confuse cosmology with religion andascribe to it only its moral and regulative character (the function and the cohesion of the world), just as thedozens of ethnographers who construct their monographs under titles reading ‘the cosmology of such and such people/tribe/culture” are interested only in its logic (“a system of thought’) refusing thus to accept that a cosmology not merely reflects the world but also builds it up, creates it, and makes sure it will be reproduced in the same way, under the same stable principles (what Schrempp calls ‘impulsion’). All this critique on my part, however, would have no meaning if I was not ready to spell out an alternative. What is then a western cosmology, which in the conditions of its utterance may be comparable with other, non-western cosmologies? In order to answer this question we need A. a cosmogony, B. an ontology, and C. a basic principle of operation (of the cosmos) and/or a possible direction or movement.

Is western cosmology secular or religious? A cosmologicalcomparison between science and religion in the west

I am hereby launching the attempt to sketch out western cosmology according to the three domains I described

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above as constitutive of every cosmology anywhere. My sole restriction for doing that is that western cosmologymust be unique to the west. I am presenting it, then in its pure, “ideal-type” form, without its various amalgamations and hybrid forms, which of course we meet more often in every-day life. The reason I try to depict a “pure” form is twofold. First I wish to add some argumentation in my claim that the origin-composition-direction schema can describe well enough what a cosmology is all about. Second I wish to compare the “pure form”, which we only meet in ideological formations(like let’s say the content of a school textbook or a dictionary definition) to the real life complications andcontradictions and especially, what is exclusively pertinent to the west, the contrast between secular and religious traditions. What will remain from the contradictions between the different cosmological claims co-existing in one and the same socio-cultural aggregation (let us say a modern nation-state) is the real cosmological context beyond “belief”, that is the real ontological (what there is) and operational (what there is for) components of the modern world.

In brief what may seem as ideologically different, it may, or according to my approach, it must be cosmologically identical. As the most striking contradiction in the west is the secular-scientific set of claims upon the origin, composition and direction of the world in contrast to the claims of the religious traditions of Christianity and Judaism upon the same domains, I will sketch the “scientific cosmology” as uniquely pertinent to the west and I will juxtapose it against the “Judeo-Christian” cosmology, the cosmology that many scholars regard as western par excellence. I will then try to trace the common elements as well as thecontradictions between the two traditions. This intellectual exercise must lead to the orientation of western cosmology either towards the Feyerabend’s (1975, 1978, 1987) claim about science and reason, or towards the Sahlins-Handelman hypothesis of the “Judeo-Christian”tradition as mainly responsible for shaping and/or underlying western cosmology. Perhaps a third direction

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between or outside the two antithetical positions may come out of the comparison attempted below. It goes without saying that the concise description of the cosmological components of each of the two traditions presented below are products of huge (in scientific terms) abstraction, committed consciously for analytical reasons (I am, therefore, still eligible for scientific forgiveness):

A. Cosmogony

A1. ‘Judeo-Christian tradition’According to the Judeo-Christian tradition, God created the world in six days and on the seventh day He rested. The last and the most perfect creation was man, namely Adam and, as part of his arm, woman Eve. They lived in Paradise but because Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate from the tree of knowledge (seduced by the devil in the form of a snake) He expelled them from Paradise and condemned them to mortality and toil. Humans carry the original sin ever since and they will only get rid of it in the final judgment, when God will decide to call them back to Paradise, but not all of them. The ones who have not regretted it and still disobey God will burn in hell.

A2. ScienceThe world was created by the Big Bang, an explosion whichformed the universe. No one made this explosion happen. The quanta released by this first explosion began almost in seconds to expand and then formed the atoms, and then the molecules and then the chemical elements, which then combined with each other and created the planets, the galaxies, and the universe which constantly expands (Abrams and Primack 2003). Further combinations of chemical elements created organic matter, water and micro-organisms, that is, ‘life’ on a specific planet we called ‘earth’ and after millions of years of evolution, human kind was formed through a process called natural selection operating through mutations and adaptation of organisms to the environment.

B. Ontology/Hierarchy

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B1. ‘Judeo-Christian tradition’Since God created everything, everything is contained into the cosmos. However, out of all beings, humans are the most privileged because they are made after the imageof God and thus they are destined to command all other beings. According to Christianity, God sent his own son, Jesus Christ to save them by showing them the way to re-enter paradise, through loving each other. The human racewill be saved from sin in the final judgment when Jesus will return, all the dead will be resurrected, the good humans will enter heaven and the evil will go to hell. There are also spiritual beings, angels and demons that represent the good and the evil in the world, but they are not gods, since god is only one. The human beings, who worship other gods as well as fetishes, are sinners. Other gods and spirits except for the Holy Spirit exist but are demons. Human beings have souls which live forever but they will be judged in the final judgment. Human beings are equipped with free will, that is, they are free to choose between good and evil, but they will be judged for their choice. Alien cosmologies cannot be encompassed into the Christian cosmology since one has toaccept God alone in order to be saved in the final judgment.

B2. ScienceSince science describes the universe, everything that exists is contained in the scientific cosmology. However,nothing exists unless its existence can be proved either by observation or by implementation of some mathematical model of assumptions and predictions based on previous observations. Therefore, gods, spirits and other beings do not exist because there is neither empirical evidence nor a logical series of assumptions and predictions basedon observation or experiments which can prove their existence. Gods, spirits, souls, ‘lands of the dead’ etc.etc. are products of pre-scientific human imagination in its attempt to adapt to the environment and create codes of social communication, two functions which constitute what we conventionally call ‘culture’. Culture creates cosmologies that are true only for its members. They are

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not objectively true beyond the limits of culture. It is useful to study cosmologies -other than scientific cosmologies that is, ‘culture’- because they offer examples of the adaptation of the human mind to the natural and social environments, and thus they can help in creating scientific models for similar applications (for example ‘artificial life’ – see the very interestingarticle by Stefan Helmreich 2001, in this respect). Therefore other cosmologies can be encompassed by sciencebut only through their transformation into ‘culture’ (or even better into texts-see Keesing 1987). Otherwise they are incompatible with science because they are not objective. They are only codes of communication not applicable outside the environment of their implementation. Science is true in any cultural environment.

There are consequently two sorts of hierarchy within scientific cosmology. The first is external and the second internal. The external refers to the relations to other cosmologies: Science is superior to non-scientific cosmologies becauseit can encompass them through scientific relativity and social science. Reason is superior to non-reason, and gods, spirits and the souls of the dead as ontology fall out of scientific cosmology, they do not exist. They exist only as a product of the human mind and culture. The human mind and culture however are onta (beings-subjects) of science; they are objective realities, observable and researchable. They fall into scientific ontology.

The internal hierarchy refers to the beings which exist within scientific cosmology, that is, everything apart from gods, spirits and the like. For such beings, it seems that a hierarchy exists among the complex and the simple beings. There is a movement from the simple to thecomplex. As the universe is constantly expanding, it creates ever more complex structures; something like a negative entropy which is evident not only in the planetsand the galaxies but also in plant, animal and human societies. Human beings as well as their aggregations and

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the products of their actions etc. (societies, cultures, economies, nation-states, and the like) seem to be treated by science as complex structures in contrast to other systems of the animal kingdom, the geological kingdom, the space etc. In that sense a privileged position of human nature is saved by science in similar fashion with Judeo-Christianity. But this hierarchy touches the third component of cosmology, the basic principle, towards which I will now turn.

C. Operation, movement, direction: the basic principle

C1. ‘The Judeo-Christian tradition’

Cosmogony and ontology already indicate the operation, movement and direction of the Judeo-Christian cosmos. Since the basic battle in the world is the battle betweengood and evil, the world is moving towards the final confrontation between the two. Although God and good willwin in the end, the human factor through free will can affect the time and the intensity of the final battle. The more souls are won for the ‘good camp’ the closer comes the judgment, the resurrection of the dead and the re-entering of paradise. The “impulsion” then is not onlyfor one to enter the paradise earlier or surer but also to see there one’s ancestors and dead friends. On the other hand, the traps of evil and its capacity for disguise requires a constant effort to discern good from evil for protecting oneself and one’s friends’ and relatives’ souls from perishing. Therefore the basic principle of the Judeo-Christian cosmology is to discern good from evil, God from non-god.

C2. Science

Since there are neither Gods nor divine providence, the ever-increasing complexity of the universe as well as cultural and social diversity can be controlled or at least predicted by human beings through science and reason. The movement of science then is heading in two complementary directions. One is towards natural

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phenomena, processes and beings-objects both of micro andmacro-cosmos (genes, planets etc.) in a constant attempt to comprehend, advance and control them for the survival of the species; and the other towards fellow human beingsand society in order to educate them and combat superstition and ignorance (The Latourian separation of Nature and Society is valid here-Latour 1993). Reason andscience then must be ‘expansive’ (quite in a similar way as the universe) in order to be successful (another similarity to missionary Christianity): Ever inventing new ways for taming nature, ever converting new followersof scientific reason. The key to this movement is to discern between the scientific and the unscientific, the reasonable and the unreasonable, the objective truth of science and the subjective truth of cultures. With regardto external hierarchy, science discerns between objectivity and subjectivity; what really exists out there from what is just a distortion of our subjective nature. With regard to internal hierarchy, science discerns between scientific and unscientific method (see Feyerabend Against Method, 1975, on that issue). As unscientific is held the personal subjectivity of each individual scientist and her/his cultural prejudice or methodological incompetence. That is why science is conducted through hierarchies among more and less privileged and honored practitioners.

The Religion versus Secularism debate and the true “truth” of western cosmology: the “buffered” identity andthe Third principle.

From the brief and rough juxtaposition of ‘Judeo-Christian’ and scientific traditions as cosmologies, it is made clear to me that there are some striking structural similarities between Judeo-Christian and scientific cosmologies despite the fact that they seem tobe mutually excluded with regard to the content of their basic principle. Although the Judeo-Christian cosmology “fills up” the cosmos with GOOD and EVIL, whereas the scientific cosmology fills up the cosmos with VALID and INVALID, there are some underlying affinities and similarities between the two: The first similarity is

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that both cosmologies are teleological; they are heading towards an end which then will become a new beginning. Judeo-Christianity is heading to the second coming, the resurrection of the dead and the re-entering to paradise,and science is heading to the era of reason, which might entail a new period in human history with no wars, ignorance, famine and want. The ends are similar but not identical. The other similarity is dualism; both cosmologies work upon basic dualisms, good and evil for Christianity, reason and superstition (objectivity and subjectivity), human needs and scarcity of resources (here Sahlins is right), validity and falseness for science. The third and more characteristic similarity (the one that Handelman, but also Abramson and Holbraad talked about) is the externality of cosmic agency: for Christianity it is God, for science it is Natural law. Itis this last structural similarity which makes researchers to be almost certain that western cosmology originates in fact from Christianity with a single replacement of cosmic agency.

Differences, however, are more striking than similarities. The most striking difference lies in ontology. Scientific and Christian ontologies are mutually excluded, since the negation of the divine nature of God is a mortal sin for Christianity (and Judaism in this respect) just as the acceptance of the objective existence of spiritual beings is an unforgivable betrayal of reason for science as it nullifies the exclusiveness of observable, objective entities and in that sense it breaks the basic principle of validity/invalidity. That is why a definition is needed: cosmology as genesis, composition and direction of the world is something much wider than a particular belief. What usually happens with beliefs is that different beliefs can co-exist and merge with each-other, shaping in that way syncretic and buffered cosmological zones. Anexample of this situation is given by the historical paradox of Christian scientists. Christian Science is a predecessor of modern secular science. In medieval and early modern Europe Christian elites strove to prove Christian God’s grace as shaping and depicting the world

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order (which in turn justified its division to rulers andsubjects) (Funkenstein 1986). This tradition continued upto the 20th century (Taylor 2007). In fact Christian scientists strove to reconcile their Christian social and moral identity with their scientific cosmological orientation. The way that Christian scientists treated God is very well shown in Sir James Jeans’ (a famous British physicist and astronomer) following words:

We have already considered with disfavor the possibility of the universe having been planned by abiologist or an engineer; from the intrinsic evidence of his creation, the Great Architect of theUniverse now begins to appear as a pure mathematician. (Jeans 2009 [1930])

Treating God as the Primal Scientist of the universe is a trademark of Christian Science no matter which scientific discipline came first or second during the creation, and this trend which prevailed for more than three centuries in the west is generally marked by the term “Deism” in the history of ideas. This simply means that God created the universe and provided the natural laws that govern it, like an automatic pilot; this is allHe did. His interference with every-day affairs then falls into the domain of superstition. Although Christianscientists constitute a clear evidence of syncretism, syncretism does not automatically mean commensurability. Since both cosmologies (Christian and scientific) are teleological – which means that there is a specific vehicle, a specific mechanism which will lead humanity toa ‘telos’ – there can be no tolerance for any sort of questioning of the validity, or the ‘truth’ of this mechanism without subverting the entire cosmology. This mechanism is another word for ontology. Despite the efforts of both clergymen and Christian scientists to prove the opposite, Christianity and Science as cosmologies are mutually excluded or else, incommensurable to each other2. You cannot follow God and science as cosmologies (not

2 Science as activity but not as cosmology is not incompatible with Christianity provided that the criterion of its conduct is not progress, or reason, but the quest of good against evil that is,

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merely as activities or personal taste) at the same time. What reallycreates confusion with regard to the incommensurability between Christianity and science is that mainline westernChristian churches have accepted cosmological relativism,which means that they have been cosmologically defeated by science, and at the same time science as social activity (and not as cosmology) has tolerated the existence of God as a metaphysical probability and a concession to social cohesion. A buffered identity (I borrow this term from Taylor) between the two domains characterizes the western world. An illustration of this buffered identity is that all leaders of secular western states declare faith to the Christian God, another that in the core-state of western culture the US, the majorityof the population are Christians with many among them being fundamentalists and extremists. Western cosmology then is a mixture of Christianity and science corresponding to a world which is fundamentally divided, with one part expressed by science and the other by Christianity. This is something that a pure intellectual,“ideal-type”, model of cosmology cannot reveal or furtherexplore. We have to find out which is this fundamental division in order to define exactly what western cosmology is about.

In order to see what parts of the cosmos express themselves by which parts of cosmology we have to go backto the three major cosmological components. By following the long historical trajectory (my main consultant here was the 800 pages long Taylor’s book) of western adventure between secular and Christian ideas, we will see that the most of the concessions made by science to Christianity refers to the cosmogony section, while the scientific ontology and principle/direction sections are

morality. Therefore Christianity may have its own epistemology as well as science may have its own morality despite the claims of its apologetics that science is morally neutral (reason against un-reason, tested against untested, real against imaginative and so forth, can well be moral categories; moral neutrality is an ideology of science). However, science’s morality and Christianity’s epistemology are subdued to their respective, separate cosmological principles and they do not overlap.

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respectively held as compatible with religion by the Church (provided that “Deism” dominates). This is the Deism synthesis which seems to provide comfort to both institutions that represent the two cosmologies, church and universities, and offers at the same time a wide and easily manageable intellectual space of domination to themodern nation-state. Science and reason offers content, meaning and direction to western cosmology’s ontology andbasic principle sections while (‘Judeo’)-Christian tradition fills the gap of agnostic-wise contested or questioned cosmogony: “we act and live according to and believe in Reason, but we also recognize the possibility of a remote transcendental agency, which once played an important role in the cosmos, but no more”. Of course there are people who believe that this agency still playsthe role that ever played, but these people are usually held as uneducated, backward, or bigots.

This division between possible divine cosmogony and certain scientific ontology has to apply to different groups of people in order to be cosmologically viable. What can really save the validity of both cosmologies in the modern world is this world’s social structure. The groups of people that have no access to scientific education, truth, excellence, and the like, are free for religious consolation, provided that this religion will recognize the superiority of education, science and objective truth in the social spectrum. Therefore the western cosmological synthesis is the product of a society deeply divided by class, not necessarily in economic but in intellectual terms. It is then this division which underlies western cosmology, the third principle: the ILLUMINATED scientists and the IGNORANT religionists, or the vice versa, the ILLUNINATED Christians and the IGNORANT modernists, secularists and the like (see Ranciere 1991 on the significance of ignorance in western culture). The absoluteness of TRUTH that both groups claim to possess, creates not only an absolute and irreconcilable hostility between the two groups ameliorated only by the authority of the nation-state but also projects the internal enemy onto the external: The threat from non-western fundamentalists is

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interpreted by the secularists as a THREAT coming from religion (see Dawkins 2006) whereas by Christians is interpreted as a threat coming from the opposite, infidelity and sin (fostered already by the sinners within the gates). Both groups believe that they constitute the SELECTED and the CIVILISED versus the STRAYED and UNCIVILISED. Western cosmology then is built upon this sentiment of superiority based on the certaintythat there is only one world, determined by a single truth, known only by western people. Whether this truth is of divine or of secular origin is of secondary importance. Elitism and racism constitute then the basic rule of western ontology. What does the world consist of?Classes and categories on the top of which stand humans against all other species with regard to nature and educated/informed elites against the illiterate masses with regard to society.

Conclusion. Western cosmology, science and Capitalism: a common basic principle

When I was doing fieldwork in Ghana I asked once one of my informants, a spirit possessed woman, about the cause of natural illness. I said, ‘You know, people in the westbelieve that illness comes when tiny insects, which we call viruses enter human bodies’. She replied: ‘yes, but do you know which spirit has sent them there?’ This sort of answer could be slightly different if given by a Christian, but not in principle different: A Christian would have said that the devil sent the viruses, or that a degraded morality of the afflicted individual had let the viruses in. There is always an agency beyond the observable world which affects human fortunes in all other cosmologies apart from the western-scientific one. This is the way other people see the west, and this, in fact, is the way we see it: A cosmology with no gods and spirits, a non-religious cosmology. However, is western cosmology really god-less?

According to Geertz (1973:90), religion is defined as ‘(1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and

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motivations in men by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic’. This definition fits well in the ‘ontology section’ of my definition of cosmology. Let us then try to apply Geertz’s definition to science (social science included) or, put it in another way, let us examine what exactly does the scientific system of symbols consist of, since we are sure that the non-scientific system consists of deities, gods, spirits and ancestors. In cosmological terms the symbolic system of science has to be unique to it, otherwise it does not constitute a cosmology. The symbolic system of science then is not only the scientific entities, that is the ‘observable’ ‘reality’ (which can include everything under the sun, and beyond) but also the connections and assumptions that bind all those elements together, and elevate them to a meaningfuland coherent whole, which is the cosmos of the specific (the scientific) cosmology.

In that sense it is not difficult to identify scientific ontology (or else the Geertzian ‘symbolic system’) with categories, concepts and theories. The alleged superiority of science lies exactly in the character of its peculiar ontology. The alleged superiority and definitely the alluring charm of science lies in the fact that while gods and ancestors never change, concepts and theories are susceptible to constant review. The famous split between nature and society, apart fromthe gradual and systematic over-exploitation and destruction ofthe former by the latter, allows also a constant game of ‘new’ intellectual understandings, formulations, connections and re-connections of ‘objective’ reality by the humans. It is exactlythis trait of science which resembles (so strikingly) the constant production of new commodities (allegedly fulfilling ‘human needs’) so common in capitalism3. The production of 3 Sahlins, in his 1996 article, which I use as a reference here, recognizes this proximity between capitalist production and the, allegedly, precarious and insecure human needs, but he locates it in the “Judo-Christian” tradition and its emphasis on the weakness of –the expelled from paradise-humans. Surprisingly he forgets to mentionthe scientific project (apart from or complementary to capitalist production) as a major counter-force against this weakness.

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intellectual commodities, concepts (‘economy’, ‘society’ and the like) and theories, is thus the magnificent machinery of scientific cosmology, which ‘acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality thatthe moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic’ (Geertz, as above). The problem is that we, anthropologists are part of this machinery. By presenting, comparing and measuring world cultures as such (that is, without the power-relationships and class divisions among them), we situate them within a frameworkof an ever expanding conceptual universe produced and controlled by us as experts and objective observers, stripped of any practical usefulness for the people concerned. As James Ferguson (2006:185), discussing Africa, notes:

Anthropologists today are eager to say how modern, Africa is. Many ordinary Africans might scratch their heads at such claim. As they examine decaying

infrastructure, non-functioning institutions, and horrificpoverty that surround them, they may be more likely to find their situation deplorably non-modern . . . Modernityin this historically specific conjuncture appears not as aset of wonderfully diverse and creative cultural practices, but as a global status and an economic condition: the condition of being “first class”. Some people and places have it; others don’t. The key issues are of membership and rank. Such a conception directly opposes the anthropological urge to construct a plurality of cultural alternatives while refusing to rank them.

Replace the concept “modernity” from the paragraph above with western cosmology or capitalism and you will have a very good illustration of what exactly the concept and theory-producing machinery of social science does, in order to distort the real, divided by class, character ofcontemporary world. However, what sort of cosmos does this intellectual machinery produce? And what is its relevance to capitalism? Capitalism as an economic systemhas a unique characteristic in the world history. It

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celebrates the limitless potential of production liberated from natural resources (The peak of this celebration is contemporary neo-liberalism, with financial capital as its main characteristic). In simple terms capital generates capital in a limitless spiral of re-investment regardless of scarcity of natural resources. There is no restriction of resources, since capital is the major factor of production (and not machines, land or labour). In an ever expanding universe,with an ever expanding human capability to understand, control and conquer it, capital will replace the natural resources, which now destroys, with future discoveries. Cosmos is limitless. It has the potential of expanding just like the universe. Two prerequisites are necessary for the conception of (as well as living in) this cosmos.First it is its infinite nature and second the capabilityof humans to understand, exploit and conquer it. Science provides evidence for both these prerequisites. The firstprerequisite provides the vital space for economic activity of the upper classes (unlimited) and the second provides the class division between the ones who know, understand, study and conquer the world and those who still live, operate and believe in limits (societal, natural and cosmological/religious). That is why its standing above human beings (as the modern pantheon) and the alleged objectivity of science is so valuable for capitalism. What then is important for the anti-capitalist movement both within and without academia is that if we want to change the world we have to rediscover its limits. The figure of the scientist/researcher who stands above society and studies it for the sake of limitless knowledge (resembling so strikingly the entrepreneur who exploits the limitless opportunities of a limitless “market”, no matter whether this activity destroys a limited natural environment or not) is one of the main pillars supporting capitalism par excellence.

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