Argument

Both the British naturalist Charles Darwin and the American anthropologist Clifford Geertz attempted explanations of the origin of variation: the former of the biological kind, the latter of the cultural kind. In so doing, both made claims that outstripped the evidence they possessed. But, in retrospect, in light of the history of the Nature versus Nurture debate, they nevertheless seem prescient, thereby possessing a kind of scientific “intuition.” By looking closely at these two intuitions, historically divided, but united by the concept of “variation,” this article argues that it is not always a “bad” thing to be either unaware or ignorant, that truths need not necessarily lead to other truths, and that one form of knowledge may be relevant to another, even when the second form is not consciously understood.