 The influence of colonial bias against unwritten thought was also challenged by Oruka’s project. By publishing his interviews with the sages he aimed to counter the second negative claim regarding the denigration of African thought, namely that “philosophy is and can only be a ‘written’ enterprise; and so a tradition without writing is incapabale of philosophy [and that any claim to the contrary] …is a non-scientific, mythological claim” (Sage Philosophy, p.xv). He insisted that there are African thinkers, not yet absorbed into the tradition of the written word, whose memories are, in terms of consistency and organization, as good as the information recorded in books (Sage Philosophy, pp. 49–50). Responding to adversaries, he cautioned that: