Okay, I just went through some old notes, and realized what my Nutty professor was trying to get at:

The class was called, Health and Illness: An Anthropological Perspective.

We spent the first half of the semester, learning about Worldviews.

I looked up the definition of Worldview from dictionary.com,

worldview
The overall perspective from which one sees and interprets the world.
A collection of beliefs about life and the universe held by an individual or a group.

The above definition, fits well with the Native American thing I was talking about in the OP. Why they believe what they do about rainfall...



Basically, IN MEDICINE, it's important to understand Worldviews, so that Doctors can provide better health care for people from various cultural backgrounds.


Here's the ACTUAL paper we had to study: Leprosy among the Limba: illness and healing in the context of world view.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/q...&dopt=Abstract




I guess I tried to 'STRETCH' what I learned in class, to 'debates'. It just doesn't work.