To interpret entrails

Dorze elders discussing the entrails of a lambKnown as enteromancy, these fellows of Ethiopia’s Dorze Tribe are reading the condition of things by analyzing the guts of a lamb. The array of blood vessels, globs of navigated fat, translucent linings and, well, the overall gusto in the guts tell many things….

Be curious before you scoff. Because it is not the intestines they are studying. It is their own thoughts and impressions that they see. The designs in the oddly fluid time-frozen intestines are a “cognitive tool“.

We have many tools to help us see the condition of things in our modern world. Stock market charts for example. But are we having better luck than tribesmen divining the guts of our future?

A Vocabulary of the Philosophical Sciences  By Charles Porterfield Krauth