Folkbiology

(Paperback)

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Description

The term "folkbiology" refers to people's everyday understanding of the biological world - how they perceive, categorize and reason about living things. This book takes an interdisciplinary approach, bringing together the work of researchers in anthropology, psychology, biology and philosophy of science. The issues covered include: are folk taxonomies a first-order approximation to classical scientific taxonomies, or are they driven more directly by utilitarian concerns; how are these category schemes linked to reasoning about natural kinds; is there any nontrivial sense in which folk-taxonomic structures are universal; and what impact does science have on folk taxonomy

Reviews

" Folk Biology is an excellent collection of original articlesthat will be a great aid to scholars and students interested inanthropological and psychological aspects of ethnobiology." Ronald W. Casson , Department of Anthropology, Oberlin College

Author Bio

Douglas L. Medin is Louis W. Menk Professor of Psychology and Professor of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University. He is the coauthor of The Native Mind and the Cultural Construction of Nature and coeditor of Folkbiology, both published by the MIT Press. Scott Atran is Research Director in Anthropology at France's National Center for Scientific Research and Visiting Professor of Psychology and Public Policy at the University of Michigan. He is the coeditor, with Douglas Medin, of Folkbiology (MIT Press, 1999).