This chapter explores assumptions about what things are made of (physicality) as revealed by ethnography and the study of antiquity. The history of Greek speculations on the problem reveals a striking diversity, where Aristotle’s ontology based on the primacy of substances was certainly not universally accepted by other theorists. A very different view on the question is common among ancient Chinese writers, who usually focussed not on stable substances but on interacting processes. This allows us to qualify some of the conclusions proposed by the anthropologist Descola in his account of the contrast between naturalism and animism.

This chapter challenges the binary contrast between ’myth’ and rational account (logos), reviewing the negative impact of the application of that dichotomy when used to draw contrasts between properly scientific modes of discourse and those to be dismissed as irrational. Ethnographic reports show that there is often no equivalent to our term ’myth’ in indigenous vocabularies, at least not one that carries similar pejorative undertones. The arguments of Lévi-Strauss that systems of myth may convey ’concrete science’ have the merit of taking those systems seriously, but still imply a pejorative binary judgement.

This chapter examines current assumptions about the agenda of the history of science where the dominant narrative concentrates on the Greek legacy and then on the transformations that took place in the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century. A Great Divide is often postulated between the workings of the Savage Mind and those of Western scientific modernity. When Greek ideas concerning nature, magic and metaphor are critically examined the way is open to expand the remit of the history of science to make room for a fuller appreciation of the work of other ancient societies and modern indigenous groups.

This chapter explores four different types of explanatory factors that might be invoked to account for the emergence of different groups of scientific theories, ontologies or cosmologies, namely ecology, language, technology and socio-political factors. It arrives at the negative conclusion that none of these singly nor all four taken in conjunction allow us to predict and explain the world-views and modes of scientific investigation that the historical record and the ethnographic data provide evidence for. The varying trajectories of the different developments that we encounter thus demand nuanced particular analysis.

This chapter accepts that biomedicine is the dominant influence on our ideas about health and disease but considers what qualifications need to be introduced to do justice first to the more complicated issues to do with mental health and then to the very diverse conceptions that have been entertained in this area in non-Western societies, ancient and modern. Drawing on Hacking’s work on natural kinds and Luhrmann’s analysis of the uncertainties of modern psychiatry, it suggests further respects in which we need to exercise caution in assessing competing claims for expertise in this area.

This chapter summarises certain conclusions concerning the scientific endeavours of different cultures at different periods. Cross-cultural understanding is fraught with difficulty but the recognition that there is no neutral vocabulary available in which to undertake our analyses does not mean that all mutual understanding is beyond reach. However, traditional views of the contrast between the literal and the metaphorical should be replaced by an acceptance of the pervasiveness of semantic stretch. Cross-cultural explorations provide an opportunity to examine our own preconceptions, including about the scope of science and the values it implies – and so also of its history.