Cross-cultural data on scientific expertise

This project includes two initial and cleaned releases: A dataset on knowledge specialists in 55 societies, and a dataset on medicinal specialists in 47 societies.

Each dataset comes from a larger database that I created from the electronic Human Relations Area Files (eHRAF) World Cultures database. All data were coded and cross-checked by Cynthiann Heckelsmiller and me from the ethnographic texts in the eHRAF.

These are from a an ongoing project, The Evolution of Science and Religion as Adaptive Knowledge Specialization. This project is a contribution to a larger interdisciplinary effort by the Issachar Fund and Templeton Religion Trust.

For some background about one of the first studies we conducted with this dataset, check out a post that I wrote about it. The dataset is part of an ongoing project that draws from a broader data package that I created from the ethnographic source texts that we queried in the eHRAF.

Here are the publications associated with this data release: Ethnoscientific expertise and knowledge specialisation in 55 traditional cultures, published in Evolutionary Human Sciences, and Ethnomedical specialists and their supernatural theories of expertise, published in Review of Philosophy and Psychology.