Lévi-Strauss able to see the planet Venus in broad daylight

In the 1977 Massey Lectures (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), which were subsequently published as Myth & Meaning (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978), Claude Levi-Strauss writes about how he found it problematic & “extremely mysterious” to discover that there was a particular tribe which he was studying that claimed to be able to see the planet Venus in broad daylight.  He thought it must be a myth. He went to astronomers to see if this were possible, and they assured him that it was actually possible that some people could, given the amount of light Venus emits.  He then went on to look at old treatises on navigation belonging to Western explorers, and found that sailors were able to see Venus in daylight. So he concluded, we could see Venus if we had a trained eye.  So, in his case as a European social anthropologist, he needed the affirmation of Western astronomers & then the treatises in order to believe the tribe’s claims were true.  There are things in front of us that we can only perceive if we have the framework.

illustrator, Shigeru Ito