Isbell, Billie Jean2005-09-142005-09-141982Isbell, Billie Jean. Culture Confronts Nature in the Dialectical World of the Tropics. In Ethno-Astronomy and Archaeo-Astronomy in the American Tropics, edited by A. F. Aveni and G. Urton. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, vol. 385 (1982): 353-363.08976616050897661613https://hdl.handle.net/1813/2193As an anthropologist, I would like to suggest that the tropics provide a perceptual environment that promotes and enhances a particular 'science of the concrete, whereby perceived order in the environment is the basis for systems of classifications, epistemological structures, and cosmologies. In the American tropics, the science of the concrete takes on a particular character that results in epistemologies founded in what I will call dialectical, reversible dualism.2449859 bytesapplication/pdfen-USAstronomyEthnoastronomyArchaeoastronomyMesoamericaIndigenous SocietiesAmerican TropicsZenithNadirAnthropologyarticle