9319798 ATRAN This research will explore how people categorize animals and plants and reason about them. The focus is on how the structure of categories, such as the set of taxonomic relations that hold between DEER and MAMMAL or OAK and TREE, constrain inferences about the distribution of biological properties among the categories. For example, when people discover that both deer and cows have multi-chambered stomachs or hoof-and-mouth disease, to what extent do people then predict that other animals also have multi-chambered stomachs or hoof-and-mouth disease? More generally, to what extent does this categorical structure constrain inferences that causally relate biological taxa to one another, and to what extent are culturally-specific belief systems, or "theories," able to modify that structure and hence change the nature of biological reasoning? These interrelated issues of category formation and induction are central to a broader understanding of conceptual development both in everyday thinking and in science. This research will compare biological categorization and reasoning among groups of American folk and Itza, the last Maya native to Guatemala's rainforest. This comparison also will involve looking into the influences of science on American folkbiology as well as the effects of cultural expertise on Itza folkbiology. In particular, the studies will address three questions: 1) To what extent is there a universal folkbiological taxonomy? 2) How is this taxonomy used in reasoning? 3) Where, and how, do differences in theories and cultural belief systems affect folkbiological categorization and reasoning? The project will build on previous fieldwork and laboratory studies, bringing together recent theoretical and methodological innovations in anthropology and psychology to promote an interdisciplinary cognitive science. It will provide a way to measure levels of consensus in categorization and reasoning among individuals within cultures, be tween cultures, and between the folktaxonomies of different cultures and scientific taxonomies. Biological inventories of local flora and fauna provide crucial comparative data. The work will employ multidisciplinary techniques across cultures to analyze theoretically the relationship between category formation and category-based reasoning for a cognitive domain, biology, which is at the center of human knowledge and understanding of the natural world. Although this project is specifically designed to address issues in basic cognition, tasks involving categorization of living kinds and reasoning about biological properties and diseases can inform our broader understanding of environment, health, and science education. ***
