The Logic of Misplaced Concreteness: Paiela Body Counting and the Nature of the Primitive Mind

Abstract

The paper has two goals: to demonstrate ethnographically the connection between “structure” and communication, which Lévi‐Strauss has consistently alleged to exist, and to challenge the thesis of Hallpike's book , The Foundations of Primitive Thought, that primitive thought reflects an “incomplete,” unsophisticated logic . The paper focuses on the counting system of the Paiela, a highland Papua New Guinea group. It argues that Paiela counting behavior is best analyzed as an element in a complex communication process. The logic of Paiela counting behavior is then the logic of the encompassing process: a communicational logic founded on concepts such as information and pattern. According to some theorists, the relationship between this logic and the logic that informs Western science is metalogical and dualistic. Paiela thought is thus revealed to be based on a complete and sophisticated alternative logic, a science among sciences. [Papua New Guinea, counting behavior, communication]