African Belief and Knowledge Systems: A Critical Perspective

Chapter Six

105 Chapter Six African Indigenous Ways of Knowing African indigenous ways of knowing are many. If recognized, they can be used as complementary modes to reinforce the legitimacy of the already known sources of knowledge like sense experience, reason, authority, tradition and common sense, among others. As such, this chapter identifies ‘indigenous’ ways of knowing traditionally used by Africans and argues for their recognition as legitimate sources of knowledge, besides those that science offers. Categorizing African Ways of Knowing African epistemology is already equipped to discuss ‘indigenous’ ways of knowing – knowledge systems produced through ‘indigenous’ thinking or exploration whether material, philosophical or linguistic. This is because it contains four basic ways of knowing: divination, revelation, intuition, and reason which can be separated into the categories of supernatural, natural, and paranormal. In addition, African epistemology has humans’ relationship to the supernatural as one of its fundamental Afro-centric themes of transcendent discourse along with human relations and human relations to their own being1 . Thus, a synthesis of knowledge, spirit, and cosmos is acknowledged in African epistemology. This being the case, the cultural practices of the African people and their descendants should be recognized as valid sources of knowledge with the same legitimacy as Western epistemology. Senegalese scholar Cheikh Anta Diop commenting on the advances of western knowledge observes, “man is a metaphysical being and it would be catastrophic if a genetic or chemical manipulation were to take away his innate anxiety”2 . For Diop and indeed so, this anxiety is man reconciling himself with himself and to bypass this process using scientific knowledge means would make him cease being himself, a “being” with a destiny, no matter how tragic. This statement, by one of modern Africa’s most prolific and renowned scholars underscores the importance of acknowledging, 106 integrating, and balancing metaphysical and physical knowledge and “being”. It stresses that scientific or rather epistemological knowledge without a metaphysical basis and reflection is void; it leaves some invisible metaphysical gaps and, hence is insufficient. This justifies the legitimacy of African ways of knowing that attempt (though at a level that can be considered by expert scientists as elementary) to encompass all the three aspects, metaphysics, science and psychology. Depending on the degree to which they interact with these three aspects, African ways of knowing vary. Yet embedded in all these cultural ways are technologies that have distinct epistemologies which have implications beyond ritual and tradition. In the next section, I discuss the ways of knowing common to Africa. The Supernatural Way of Knowing In African cosmology, the supernatural is considered a way of knowing the unknown through mystical means. However, the said is twofold and so has two variations namely divination and revelation. For purposes of clarity, I shall look at the two variations separately. Divination The word divination derived from the Latin noun divinatio-onis f. divino which means “the gift of prophecy, divination,” formed from the past participle of the verb divinare, “to foretell, prophesy, forebode, divine the future”. This noun is closely related to the adjective divinus-a-um, “belonging or relating to a deity, divine”3 . Cicero, in his treatise De Divinatione (Concerning Divination) informs us that the Latin word, because of its derivation from divinus, meaning belonging or relating to a deity, was an improvement on the original Greek word mantike, derived from mania (furor in Latin), which meant madness, raving, insanity, or inspiration4 . Considering these two definitions, divination can be understood as a way of exploring the unknown in order to elicit answers to questions beyond the range of ordinary human understanding. It should be quickly noted that divination always involves complementary modes of cognition associated with primary 107 process and secondary process of thinking or knowing. This tantamount to saying diviners are specialists who use the idea of moving from a boundless to a bounded realm of existence in their practice. This movement makes diviners to excel in insight, imagination, fluency in language and knowledge of cultural traditions. During divination process, they (diviners) construct usable knowledge from oracular messages. To do so, they link diverse domains of representational information and symbolism with emotional or presentational experience. Divination has had a critical role in the classical world, especially in ancient Egypt and the Middle East, the Americas, India, Tibet, Mongolia, Japan, China, Korea and Africa5 . Subjects of divinatory inquiry are many. They include complex questions about past events, the present and the future, disasters...