Transsingularities: the cognitive foundations of shamanism in Northern Asia

In Tuva, Southern Siberia, people recognize that every category of beings—humans, animals, trees, and even landscape features—can include singular individuals distinguished by unusual bodily or behavioral traits. Shamans are one example among humans, but similar singular beings appear across species and places. This pattern, termed 'transsingularity,' links these atypical beings across categories. The underlying cognitive mechanism is a 'singularity detection device,' an inferential schema connecting individuality with categorical norms. This device explains representations of metamorphosis and client-shaman interactions, and appears foundational to Northern Asian shamanism, potentially also operating in animist cosmologies elsewhere.

Study at a glance

Abstract

In Tuva (Southern Siberia), people expect that each class of beings contains singular individuals that distinguish themselves by atypical bodily and behavioural features and capacities. Among humans, such beings are shamans, but Tuvans also identify shamans among animals and trees. Even in the landscape, some atypical places are strong personalities. I call ‘transsingularity’ the supposed relationship that connects all these singular beings across their different classes. This treatment of atypical beings, which is widespread among Northern Asian traditions, is based on a ‘singularity detection device’, an inferential schema that links individuality and categorial norm in a specific way. This cognitive device sheds light on representations about metamorphosis as well as on interactional strategies between clients and shamans. The singularity detection device, as opposed to categorial thinking, appears to be at the foundation of Northern Asian shamanism. Finally I suggest that it may also play a role in animist cosmologies in other regions of the world.