Technology and Culture in a Developing Country

Summary

Even though the subject of my paper is ‘Technology and Culture in a Developing Country’, it seems appropriate to preface it by examining science itself in the cultural traditions of a developing country, such as Ghana, in view of the fact that the lack of technological advancement, or the ossified state in which the techniques of production found themselves, in the traditional setting of Africa and, in many ways, even in modern Africa, is certainly attributable to the incomprehensible inattention to the search for scientific principles by the traditional technologists. I begin therefore with observations on how science and knowledge fared in the traditional culture of a developing country.

Science and Our Culture

In a previous publication I pointed out—indeed I stressed—the empirical orientation of African thought: maintaining that African proverbs, for instance, a number of which bear some philosophical content, addressed—or resulted from reflections on—specific situations, events or experiences in the lives of the people, and that even such a metaphysical concept as destiny (or fate) was reached inductively, experience being the basis of the reasoning that led to it. Observation and experience constituted a great part of the sources of knowledge in African traditions.