NP: Fishermen Think Holistically

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

This was further on down on Henry's previous link:

Fishermen Think Holistically
It’s long been recognized that East Asians tend to think more holistically than 
Westerners. Instead of parsing the world into categories and rules, East Asians 
tend to emphasize relationships and similarities between objects and people. As 
the psychologist Richard Nisbett writes in his book The Geography of Thought, 
“Modern Westerners see a world of objects—discrete and unconnected things. 
Modern Asians are inclined to see a world of substances—continuous masses of 
matter.” (As Nisbett notes, these differences in thinking have deep historical 
roots. The ancient Greeks saw the world as consisting of different kinds of 
matter, whereas ancient Chinese philosophers emphasized the continuity of all 
creation.) 

The question, of course, is what causes such stark difference in cognitive 
style? One leading explanation is that holistic thought is a by-product of 
societies with greater social interdependence. Nisbett defines an interdependent 
society as one in which “relationships exist for their own sake and rest on 
a sense of unity and mutality. These relationships 
are based on sympathy, frequent face-to-face interaction, shared 
experiences, and even shared property.” In contrast, independent societies tend 
to see such relationships as mostly a means to an end. “Such relationships,” 
Nisbett writes, “frequently involve the exchange of goods and labor and are 
often based on bargaining and contracts.”

To test the possible link between social interdependence and holism, Nisbett and 
colleagues studied farmers, fisherman and herders in Eastern Turkey. Unlike the 
fishing and farming communities, which depend on a set of deep-seated 
relationships, herders are famously nomadic and isolated. As predicted, herders 
also exhibited significantly less holistic cognition. Like Westerners, they 
tended to focus on the differences between objects rather than their 
similarities. They were more likely to perceive the world as a collection of 
things rather than as a fluid set of substances.

Are you a herder or a fisherman? 
Do you think your culture has influenced your cognitive style?

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=brain-flashes-three-cogni&page=2