Traditional African Religion is Science

Specific problems are solved by common sense. General problems are solved by theory.


From Pattern of Thought in Africa and the West by Robin Horton

I suggest that in traditional Africa, relations between common sense and theory are essentially the same as in Europe. That is, common sense is the handier and more economic tool for coping with a wide range of circumstances in everyday life. Nevertheless, there are certain circumstances that can only be coped with in terms of wider casual vision than common sense provides. And in these circumstances there is a jump to theoretical thinking.... But it is only from the more recent studies of African cosmologies, where religious beliefs are shown in the context of the various everyday contingencies they are invoked to explain, that we have begun to see how traditional religious thought also operates by similar process of abstraction, analysis and reintegration.