RESPONSE BY THE BENINOISE PHILOSOPHER OF SCIENCE AIME DAFON SEGLA TO A REVIEW OF HIS WORK

Dear Toyin ADEPOJU,
Thanks for the blog, thanks for all you are doing, thanks for your promise about translations
and publications.

I am in dept of your kind solidarity but I know you do it because it is from a highly
disinterested pan africanist scientific heart.

When french text is short i can manage to translate it in average correct english. It is the
case with the abstract on Orisha as social institution for science.

But when the text is long, i put a lot of time to translate it. The two articles you read were of
that kind. The first, ‘’Cosmological vision of the Yoruba-Idààcha: A light on Yoruba history
and culture’’ was translated by me (because the Conference was held in Ghana / Cape
Coast with many coming from the US) and has been corrected by Holbrook herself. And then
again, i adjust it. But the second ‘’Scientific mind and cultural articulation in an oral society:
language as a mirror’’ has been translated from french directly by Social Science Information
Sage Pub. They pay themselves for it because they wanted it to be published in english.

Dear Brother,
I propose, instead of article to be translated now, to finish the review of the books and
translate them to english and publish them, as the books will include practically the articles.
I am aware that time is urgent, but by this year, if god wants, /asè ti olorun (in idààcha
dialect)/ i will succeed to complete all them.

About your review, it is a gift. Yes, i feel very stronger with your review and advices. When
you write, “It is very,very helpful,though,for both moral,material and logistical support to have
people who recognise your potential and commit themselves to helping you actualise it,in
whatever way they can’’, you give me so wonderful energy to go up. Indeed, it is not a
rewarding task today to be at this side within the international scientific community, to be
addressing relevant topics that point to emerging discoveries in the non-western fields of
research.

Yes, brother I agree that, in the two assays you read, it is not clear enough the distinction
between intuitive knowledge (and what for) and abstract formal, theorised, well premeditated
knowledge (where and what for) though the former is predominantly tacit or implicit. Are we
discussing and comparing methods and ways of thinking of scientists in Western and that of
lay men in non-western cultures? If so, the winner of the ‘’match’’ is obviously the Western
world. Yes, I am aware of the fact that we should make seriously an account of the question
of division of labor, in bringing out a central interrogation as to whether ways of coining
knowledge of a practitioner in a non-western culture including during our classical and late
antiquity period (African, Yoruba) can be labelled ‘scientific’.

FORMAL and INTUITIVE
1- FORMAL / THEORISED KNOWLEDGE (Implicit or tacit)

At the one hand, and about formal and well premeditated knowledge, i maintain that the false
dichotomy between western science and the non-westren science obscures the presence of
different ways of securing predictive knowledge of the material world. That, in one of the two
essays of me you read, one can find abstract and formal reasonning about the 8 timezones/
midnight encoding by original coders of divinatory calendar (iwon ri iwon ogun mejo);
one can also find it in my article ‘’From cosmogony to number theory, french) and also in
‘’Epistemological reassessment of Yoruba concept of number, french). With the perfect
coincidence between binary/hexa codes and the linguistic codes of the 256 chapters of Ifa
corpus, that despite the dispersion of the pre Oduduwa Yoruba now mainly in Dahomey
(Benin Republic) who were influenced by new spatial habits facing the divining chain (the
influence of the new neighbours, the Fon) different from the usage of the Yoruba from
Nigeria, the mathematical interpretations remain the same in this part of Yoruba country,
considering all that, I believe we have a process where implicit or tacit knowledge coined
from arrangements of inscriptions shows sufficient abstract reasoning comprising high
generalization (causality and inferences-abduction, deduction and induction, the criticism of
the orthodox).

Indeed, it is because the cowry shells appear on two sides of the divining chain and that they
are aligned, viewed from left to right and from bottom to the top, that there is a reason for
hexa and binary systems to occur (My article in french on ‘’From cosmology to number
theory: Ifa revisited as a case study of oral, formal mathematics). It is because this is highly
premeditated that the original coders could give the correspondent inscriptions their
equivalent linguistic nominations as they have internally theorized and imagined them (Kant).
I believe that the Yoruba numeration system has been base five first, and this move to base
twenty after the taking into account of the spatial generative scheme and mental model of the
Yoruba incorporated from cosmology (I argue this contra Verran, 10 fingers and 10 toes). All
this happens at the urban revolution, somewhere in Yoruba land, Ilé-Ifè presumably. And
who can make this happen apart from SCIENTIFIC INSTITUTIONS. I maintain that in african
history, Yoruba in particular, science and scientific institutions have existed and their findings
and productions have influenced a lot the rationalization of real life. It is my anthropological
hypothesis. Unfortunately, the means were essentially oral, tacit, implicit and invisible objects
and moreover with the long slavery and colonial/neocolonial passages, we lost big part of
this. To convince international scientific community as to the evidence of such institutions is
not easy. Meanwhile we hold these materials and facts as tangible and valid.

When i finished the essay on Yoruba geometry ‘Scientific mind and cultural articulation,
language as a mirror’, and that it comes to me to realize as if we were drawing the same
Euclidian representation in Greek geometric tradition, Yoruba elements of geometry deriving
from one another, i wondered if in Yoruba history, there have been scientific groups and
which works and findinds influenced social life, including languages, in the same way The
ACADEMIE FRANCAISE has been influencing and canalizing the french language since the
renaissance. But here again, it is my anthropological hypothesis. Anyway, we can question
the common view that theoretical mathematical knowledge was exclusively transmitted by
writing systems which show a tendency to definition and formalism. In contrast to the
classical thesis, there is the possibility of formal and abstract mathematical constructions in
oral societies without writing even in classical and late antiquity.

Now, we have to gather existing materials and prove scientific status with use of try, error,
causality, inferences and experiment, not experience but namely and mainly
experiment. Unless this is clarified, we will continue to draw the rubicon and the positivists
and orthodow also draw theirs. It is the reason of my Project on ‘’Transformation of bio
medical knowledge...’’ and also the concern of the one page abstract that i sent on ‘’Orisha
as scientific institutions’’. Yes, Dear brother, you can share these two documents with others.

I wish in return critics and observations.
2- INTUITIVE
At the second hand, you are right but my target is not to primitivising the African. I was
furious it was said African languages can not convey science and technology and it was a
challenge for me to prove a valid anthropological stock of proto-concepts and concepts
predating any theoretical constructions, as has been the case of intuitive stage of Western
scientific rationality, so also in India, Greece, Egypt, and Babylon (Intrinsic character of
human mind). You see it when finally you say ‘’Having noted that, however, it remains true
that Segla is able, using the same premises on the intuitive character of mathematical
knowledge and its grounding in metaphors derived from spatial orientation through the body,
to develop a strong argument for the teaching of mathematics in Yoruba. Using vigorously
and precisely developed examples, he argues that Yoruba mathematical conceptions can be
developed in relation to more reflexive theoretical formulations.’ ’

But again, this distinction might be clearer in work, and thank again for review.
I would add that (apart from schooling in our mother tongues), this helps us to go up also in
improving or modernizing existing traditional ancestral technologies. We see now in Africa
that chinese and western commodities (goods) are invading the continent while our proper
traditional goods which were already known through centuries of practical experience and
know-how are abandonned, implying economical weakness for the continent. Meiji Japon did
well in calling for technology translation, a conversion of existing ancestral technical
knowledge into science-based know-how but in keeping the cultural basis and in grafting on
the cultural cocoon.

I want to say that, If Meiji Japan succeeded in developing its economy from Tokugawa –
Meiji period (1868), it is because Japanese peasants and crafts men accepted to collaborate
with scientists who questioned them on the proto-concepts and the concepts underlying the
production of traditional ancestral industries. Meiji Japan directed many students from Tokyo
University to write their thesis on traditional products. Using ethnographies of these existing
technologies, Japanese scientists discovered chemical solution to improve many of
traditional products, indigo, Japanese traditional paper, lacquer, camphor, wax, face powder,
niter, sake, soy sauce, etc. For instance, they could prevent decomposition of sake and
method of glazing pottery gave durability; the implications were that Japanese sake and
pottery for instance gained important export.

I was elevated by my grand mother and her know-how were impressive about all things. This
perhaps influenced me in turning towards Epistemology, history of science and technology
and anthropology of knowledge in non-western cultures. When i see nowadays that all the
traditional knowledge and know-how are falling apart, Ione can question african identity and it
really brings many fear...

Let me quit you now but tell me, Dear brother, are you Yoruba Oyo, Egba, Ijebu, Eketi, or
...? Where are You? In UK, I suppose? What is your position there?
Good day.
Yours faithfully
Aimé Dafon