Tuesday, April 12, 2016

Science and the Self

From watching a documentary on dude of the day, Bronislaw Malinawski..

For all his attempts at scientific objectivity, Malinowsky was - like everyone of us, - a prisoner of his own time and culture, with all its prejudices.

This perception of Malinowsky came about his M's diaries were released. Indeed, he was a person different from his science, and somewhat conformist to his society, not in forward, but in regressive thought which united him with the prevalent cultural notions (or more specifically, to the negatives contained therein).

That psychological sciences followed, and proved it so, only gives a credence to his psyche as one derived from socio-cultural experiences, which saw it detached from the findings it was making later on in life. The detachment of M is clear in the state of selective focusing on the abject or the profane his psyche often resorted to, despite deducing and reforming from active experience. He could be possessed by the same "demons" as the tribes eschwed, and in a guilt over not being able to exorcise them as effectively, which I believe wasn't helped by a closed "aristrocratic" (which he so aspired to meet) Victorian society.

Now, a read of "A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term" ensues. It seems available in the public domain.

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