Page 17 - Contribution To Phenomenology

10 LESTER EMBREE

and of course the suggestion urged here is that the word "cuhure"
replace the word "human" just as the word "discipline'' replace the word
"science," so that "cultural discipline(s)" replace "human science(s)." It
may be best now to urge the proposed expression directly.
To begin with, "cultural discipline" readily designates "disciplines
concerned with cultural matters," whereas "cultural discipline" as
"discipline that is cultural" is unhelpful because it is difficult to see how
there might be a non-cultural combination of cultural practices. In other
words, all disciplines as such are cultural by virtue of being made up of
learned practices even if not all of them are cultural by virtue of that
which is dealt with in them! How the matters or objects addressed in
cultural disciplines are cultural will be returned to presently. On the
linguistic level, it would furthermore seem that the expression "cultural
discipline(s)" is readily translatable into at least the Western European
languages. But clearly the principal advantage of "cultural discipline" is
the inclusion of the worlds of non-humans among the cultural matters
investigated and otherwise related to and thus the inclusion of at least
primate ethology (and conservation) among the cultural disciplines.^^
Research on chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas has now shown that
they are the most similar of known non-humans to humans in anatomy
and behavior. The behavioral affinities include "friendship, love, aggres-
sion, language, and tool use."^^ Chimpanzees specifically can comprehend
human language better than human two-year-olds, use plants as medicin-
es, use stones and sticks to crack nuts and collect insects and teach these

^^ Cf. W. C. McGrew, Chimpanzee Material Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1992). Adding two to those Alfred Krober proposed in 1928 (in
reflection on KGhler's work), McGrew proposes the following eight criteria, the
whole set of which would need to be met for "recognizing cultural acts in other
species" (except for the last two, which do not apply to humans beyond the foraging
type of life-way, these are met by lawnmowing!):
Innovation New pattern is invented or modified
Dissemination Pattern acquired by another from innovator
Standardisation Form of pattern is consistent and stylised
Durability Pattern performed without presence of demonstrator
Diffusion Pattern spreads fi*om one group to another
Tradition Pattern persists from innovator's generation to next one
Non-Subsistence Pattern transcends subsistance
Naturalness Pattern shown in absence of direct human influence
^^ Eugene Linden, "A Curious Kinship: Apes and Humans," National
Geographic, 181 (1992), 10. Cf. Eugene Linden, "Bonobos, Chimpanzees with a
Difference," idem.