Midterm Essay #1 John Reid discusses in his video comparing the differences of believing and knowing. He uses a couple of examples to support his claim of Animism and how it really works. One example is he uses a powerful metaphor claiming; if you read a book about how to ride a bike would you be able to just get on the bike and start riding? The answer is no because reading the book gives you a belief that you can ride the bike, but you actually don’t know how to ride the bike because you haven't had that experience. This is a strong point in his argument of understanding what Animism really is. He also includes as an example that taking the next step into Animism is to “Take the idea of personhood and spread that idea into everything that…show more content… Hornborg uses a strong statement that Amazonian’s believe in classifying animals, or living things as subjects, and that Europeans classify them as objects. This is one difference of Indigenous v. Western belief that Hornborg shares. The author (Hornborg 2006) says: “Animism suggests the intermediate view that knowledge is a relation that shapes both the knower and the known.” This statement is very important because this is exactly what Reid stressed in his video. Reid made it clear that people who truly share animistic ideas “know” rather than just share a belief. An example that I would personally use to describe this is: I believe in “god” or a greater power over all the universe, but I don't actually know God, I have never met him/her. What I do know is that science is about “knowing” and that whatever is not known is a theory or rather a belief. Another main point that Hornborg uses is that Animism is the indigenous belief of relationships between persons and things and that Westerners use objectivism to identify there relationship between persons and things. Both Reid and Hornborg discuss the basic structural ideas of animism and how they vary between different cultures. Reid makes animism a little easier to understand by using metaphorical examples, but Hornborg uses factual evidence and multidisciplinary examples to support his…show more content… Gimbutas looks specifically at the role of goddesses and women in the Paleolithic and Neolithci periods, and how there roles have transitioned throughout the years. These are two examples of areas that Dr. Gimbutas looks at with “fresh eyes” because she is not like modern anthropologists. She does not observe things in a Western modern view, her lens is open and broad. She does not discredit the possibility of figurines and symbols that shape the role of goddesses and women in earlier cultures, and she also does not give into the patriarchal viewpoint that tends to discredit women as a reliable source of information regarding ancient history. A few examples of newer data discovered during the Neolithic period in Western Europe are hunter-gathering, farming, tools, and animals to explain expansion and knowledge of the newer Neolithic period. These are examples that come after Dr. Gimbutas and give rise to the advancement and understanding of the Neolithic culture before they transition into Indo-Europeans. The importance of these new examples
