The Art of Tracking: The Origin of Science

Louis Liebenberg, David Philip, Cape Town. First published 1990.
Second impression 2001
Softcover R94,95
ISBN 0 86486 293 8, 150mm x 232mm, 176 pages

"In a work of painstaking and wide-ranging scholarship, backed up by fieldwork among the Kalahari hunter-gatherers, Louis Liebenberg explains how the art of tracking represents a crucial step in human evolution. [He] examines the principles of tracking, and the classification and interpretation of spoor under difficult conditions. ... [and] argues that the art of tracking involves the same intellectual, and creative abilities as physics and mathematics, and may therefore represent the origin of science itself." So reads the back cover of The Art of Tracking: The Origin of Science. It's well put.

Highly original work: This is indeed a highly original and multi-disciplinary work fuelled with the obvious passion the author has for his subject. Liebenberg delves first into the evolution of hunter-gatherer subsistence, tracing our four-million-year hominid history to analyse the evolution of subsistence and the emergence of tracking as a primary tool in that subsistence. This, he suggests, is the first attempt at science and a scientific discipline and that a study of its origins and development can clarify the development of the current constructs of the human scientific mind.

Similarities to modern science: Part two of The Art of Tracking further develops this theme with an analysis of current hunter-gatherer subsistence in Botswana and Namibia's Kalahari and, in particular, the role and development of tracking in this environment and culture. The third and final section examines the "fundamentals of tracking" such as the classification of spoor, its interpretation, the basic principles of following spoor and the similarities of these, in terms of intellectual and creative abilities, to modern science.

The Art of Tracking provides an essential companion to any of Liebenberg's field guides on the subject of tracking and whether or not you subscribe to the book's hypothesis, it is fascinating and stimulating reading and fitting testament to Louis Liebenberg's own contribution to the science of tracking.

Posted: Other by CC Africa, Date: 22 November 2006