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Saturday, March 12, 2011

The Pirahã as real-life Fuzzies?

In H. Beam Piper's novels about the Fuzzies, Piper emphasizes the Fuzzies' strictly empirical orientation. The Fuzzies call natural phenomena "always-so things," and artifacts "made-things," a distinction apparently also made by the Pirahã, but lost on many West Eurasian theists.



Of course, we can always read too much into accounts of the world views of non-Western peoples as contrasts with, and implied criticisms of, our own culture.

BTW, I wonder if John Scalzi's forthcoming reboot of the Fuzzy story will develop and show from Piper's hints how the Fuzzies differ cognitively from humans.

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