Analogical Reasoning and the Content of Creation Stories. Quantitative Comparisons of Preindustrial Societies

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Cross-Cultural Research, 43, 2, (2009), pp. 91-122ISSN
Publication type
Article / Letter to editor

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Organization
SW OZ RSCR SOC
Journal title
Cross-Cultural Research
Volume
vol. 43
Issue
iss. 2
Languages used
English (eng)
Page start
p. 91
Page end
p. 122
Subject
Inequality, cohesion and modernization; Ongelijkheid, cohesie en moderniseringAbstract
A long-standing question in sociology concerns preindustrial societies and the relationship between their subsistence technology and ideas about god. This article proposes a shift from questions regarding gods who now and then create to questions about creations that sometimes involve a god. For preindustrial societies, it addresses the relation between their subsistence technology and the content of their creation stories. This article's answer combines Hume's general hypothesis that people reason by analogy with Topitsch's specification that invokes vital, technical, and social analogies. This conjunction yields concrete hypotheses about the substance of creation stories in societies with varying levels of subsistence technology according to Lenski's typology. To test these hypotheses, the authors used Murdock's Standard Cross-Cultural Sample and the Human Relations Area Files. Field reports were coded for 116 preindustrial societies. The findings show that people use different thought models to explain the unknown, depending on the society's level of subsistence technology.
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- Academic publications [204994]
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- Faculty of Social Sciences [27347]
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