Culture Shock for Nerds

"Everything is arranged so that it be this way, this is what is called culture."
~ Jacques Derrida

Johan Galtung (*1930) is the godfather of peace research. In that capacity, he traveled a lot. As a man of science and scholarship he observed that the quest for knowledge and how it is communicated varies across cultures in ways that reflect the cultures' deepest assumptions, traditions, and ways to relate. He recorded his impressions in a paper that I am currently unable to locate and I don't have a crisp memory of how I stumbled onto it at the time. I think my PhD advisor, Mick Rothbart, brought it to class one day. I do remember Galtung's main points, though, and I often retell his story, now in the blogaxy.

Galtung observes that there are 4 major cultures of science: the Anglo-Saxon, the Teutonic, the Gallic, and the Nipponic. As the names suggest, the Anglo-Saxon sphere includes Great Britain, the remnants of its empire and former colonies. The Teutonic sphere comprises Central and Eastern Europe and a dominance of Germanic thoughtways. The Gallic sphere is France and other romance nations. Finally, the Nipponic sphere is not only Japan, but the greater Buddhist, Confucian, and Zen East.

Each sphere has its own epistemology, with specific ideals and ethics. Swimming in the wake of the British empiricists, the Anglo-Saxons prize observational data. The Urtyp of this orientation is atheoretical dust-bowl empiricism. The sin of having no data is greater than the sins of fishing, dredging, mining, or of post-hoc'ing explanations. The Teutons prize logico-mathematical deductions and derivations. Here the greatest sin is theoretical incoherence. Kant llässt grüssen. The Gauls take the esthetic approach. They want beauty and elegance. Who needs truth? The sin is to not please the senses. The Nipponics are all about social harmony. Knowledge is found in consensus. The gravest sin is disobedience and social disruption. So let's all agree that there is no climate change.

These characterizations are caricatures, but in my years of crawling around the block after reading Galtung, I have become convinced that their kernels of truth are large. In the tale as Galtung tells it, things come to a head at a hypothetical world congress of science and scholarship. A speaker gives a talk and gets 4 questions.

The Anglo-Saxon: "Do you have empirical data to support your claims?"

The Teuton: "Do your hypotheses follow from your theoretical premises?"

The Gaul: "Peut-on dire ça en bon français?"

The Nipponic: "Who is your sensei (master)?"

Is it any wonder that we talk at cross-purposes?

Galtung, enlightened as he is, subsumes all so-called Third World nations in the cultural style of whichever European (or East Asian) country colonized them. In his typology, there is no African epistemological style. I look forward to the day when Africa makes itself heard. I have a hunch that its cultural style will be as fascinating and as flawed as the Big 4 that are already on the scene.

Through every campus, there runs another fissure. This one is between the sciences and the humanities. The sciences are heavily Anglo-Saxon and somewhat Teutonic; the humanities are heavily Gallic and somewhat Nipponic. Science struggles with the problem of induction. It uses past data to forecast the future. The humanities seek to understand, to explain, and to relate.

At a humanist conference in Morocco I got a taste. Papers were read, literally read. To me that was shocking because I am used to science talks, which consist of pretty pictures (graphs with data!) and a story, delivered without notes, to go with that. Many of the Morocco papers were read as a performance, with a sense of drama, emphatic gestures, and modulated intonation. The French sounded beautiful, full of des mots justes. Now, if I only knew what they were talking about.