In an article published in 1967, I compared and contrasted patterns of thought in Africa and the West, taking Africa as a living exemplar of ‘traditionality’ and the West as a pioneer of ‘modernity’. I began the article by elaborating on Durkheim's neglected insight concerning the continuities between, on the one hand the spiritualistic thought of traditional cultures in Mrica and elsewhere, and on the other the mechanistic thought of Western cultures. I showed how the former, no less than the latter, gave rise to theoretical systems whose basic raison d'êrre was the extension of the magnificent but nonetheless limited causal vision of everyday commonsense thinking. I also proposed a technological/economic/sociological explanation for the divergence in theoretical idiom as between Africa and the West. Having made much of continuities between the two streams of thought, I went on to redress the balance by setting out a scheme of contrasts. Here I proposed an amended and developed version of Popper's celebrated ‘closed’ /‘open’ dichotomy, with Africa exemplifying the ‘closed’ and the West exemplifying the ‘open’. Finally, invoking once again a technological/economic/sociological determinism, I alluded to a number of factors that seemed to me to have underpinned the transition from ‘closed’ to ‘open’ ways of thinking in earlier Europe.

Down through the years, this article has enjoyed a certain notoriety. Some few scholars have agreed enthusiastically with part or all of it. Others, more numerous, have been affronted by its assault on certain hoary orthodoxies in the comparative sociology of ideas, and have given strong critical responses.