SCIENCE, COMMON-SENSE AND IDEOLOGY 93
may thus be taken to be the same discourse. This is also, of course, of special interest here in view of the introductory background above.
The argument in anthropology is roughly this: if rationality is taken to be the performance of actions directed towards goals, such goal-oriented actions being believed, as per current knowledge and idea-systems, to lead to those goals, then people of all native cultures display the same rationality as those of "advanced" cultures. Failure to recognize this is due not only to the archetypal ethnocentrism of Western anthropologists of yore, (many of whom felt compelled to comment upon, if not judgementally decry, the "irrationality" of beliefs in native cultures) but to an erroneous understanding of the character and role of socialized cognition. "Rationality" is to be understood in the social context where traditional belief-systems act on practical intercourse with both nature and society, especially in production activities, in an overall manner not as distinct from similar relationships in rifore modem, "science-oriented" cultures.
To illustrate, in some of the most cogent of such arguments, R. Horton [2] and I.C.Jarvie & Joseph Agassi [3], have shown that magical beleif systems and science both view the universe as a predictable and manipulable system, both generating explanatory theories placing phenomena and events in a causal context wider than that provided by common-sense. Further, common-sense perception and theory (magical or scientific) play more or less the same complementary cognitive roles in native as in modem societies where too, despite the development of science and spread of scientific ideas, the dominant mode of thought in everyday is characterized by common-sense knowledge, within which of course many scientific ideas may have been incorporated, rather than by theoretical or scientific thought only resorted to when needed.
We may note in passing, for reference later in the paper, that this argument would appear to hold good in a generalised sociology of knowledge for, as Marx and E-ngels clearly show in The German Ideology and elsewhere, social consciousness manifested as ideas, beliefs etc., confronts the individual as a socially constructed reality, outside of their will, to which they respond at the level of day-to-day or common-sense interactions.
To continue, native cultures thus cannot be faulted for either the nature of their beliefs or for the cognitive status of these beliefs. The "irrationality" of the native cannot be demonstrated by the apparent contradiction between his magical beliefs and his empirical common-sense observations regarding causalities, nor is it to be explained by devices to reconcile the two since, in his world-view or Weltanschauung, they are part of the same belief system: sowing seeds and ritual chanting are "necessary" for a good crop.