Atran's biodiversity parser: Doubts about hierarchy and autonomy
Eugene S. Hunn a1 a1 Department of Anthropology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195-3100
hunn@u.washington.edu
Abstract
Atran argues that an autonomous ethnobiological
information-processing module exists. This module imputes
a “deep causal essence” to folk-biological taxa
and uses a hierarchy of taxonomic ranks. I argue that Atran's
own data suggest that rank is not an essential feature of the
ethnobiological module, and that ethnobiological causal essences
may be generalized to other domains and vice versa, limiting its
autonomy.
