This paper is dedicated to tlze little boy who tried to prove that spiders hear with their legs. A$er cutting off a spider's legs, he yelled, "Jump!" The spider did not jump. So the little boy said, "You see, I was right. Spiders hear with their legs." INWHAT TERMS SHOULD WE UNDERSTAND the understandings of other peoples and compare those understandings with our own? Reflection on this central issue in the anthropology of thought raises the perplexing secondary question, What are we to make of another culture's apparently false knowledge? For example, how is the student of the Azande t o comprehend their attempts The work of Roy G. D'Andrade and Theodore M. Newcomb has been an inspiration in the development of the hypothesis advanced in this paper. Without implicating them in my particular perspective on the relationship between symbolic systems and intellectual processes, I would like to thank them for their scholarship and their encouragement. I am also grateful to Donald W. Fiske and J. David Greenstone for their penetrating comments on an earlier version of this paper. The financial support of the Spencer Foundation and the National Institute of Mental Health is much appreciated.
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