https://doi.org/10.31648/hip.889
This article is polemical in nature, as it challenges a common belief that material remains of past communities “speak for themselves”, since they are the only source of information concerning those societies. Such a belief is reflected in a focus on research in material culture, which is recently becoming popular in European and world humanities. According to the supporters of a “return to materialism” or “return to things”, the essence of this new approach is to reduce, or altogether eliminate, an unjustified asymmetry between human intentional actions and a non-human, material (unintentional) world of causative relations. However, Cinterpreting prehistory basing on a set of material objects arranged by an archaeologist, means interpreting it in a community language, that is a language in which the given set has been endowed with historical meaning. Historical meaning of a set of material objects exhibited in a museum is a result of some agreements made by a community (a community of archaeologists). It is a literal objective reference, a “socially perceived” fragment of past reality, or in other words, its interpretation from the perspective of a culturally accepted set of claims. Without agreement in a community language it is impossible to arrange material objects and endow them with historical meaning, just as it is impossible to interpret their meaning without a knowledge of that community language. The Bedouin or the Australian Aborigines, for example, who are alien to the Western “furnishing” of the world, and therefore without a knowledge of that particular community language, are incapable to read the historical meaning from a set of objects carrying it. Community language is primordial in nature; in a logical sense it precedes both instilling material objects with historical meaning and its interpretation by a recipient. The knowledge of a community language is a necessary condition for sending and receiving a message. Material objects, as well as past reality, in which they functioned, are inextricably linked with the researcher’s mental background, or with his cultural background. Consequently, it proves impossible to separate the objective character of things from the cultural context through which they are being perceived. In other words, it is impossible to separate material objects from our way of thinking about them. Material (or physical) objects, from the point of view of the natural sciences, tell us nothing on their own accord. “It is we who do so”, as R. Rorty would put it. The main thesis of this article is therefore consistent with the thoughts of the following thinkers: Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz, Jerzy Kmita, Hilary Putnam, and Willard Van Orman Quine. On the other hand, reification of research on culture, which recently has gained so much acclaim, is nothing but mythical thinking, very typical of popular culture, and expressing itself in both anthropomorphization of the world of nature, and reification of the world of culture.
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