Rappaport was an ecological anthropologist, like Andrew P. Vayda, and wished to contrast the actual reality and adaptations (the operational environment) within a people's ecological niche – say, the existence of tsetse flies and their role in causing sleeping sickness among humans – with how the people's culture understands nature (the cognized environment) – say, the belief that witches live in those areas that science knows is the habitat of the tsetse.
Rappaport's principal concern was the role of ritual in mediating the cognized and operational environments.
According to this group, all properties and qualities of experience are mediated by our body's neuroendocrine systems.
The operational environment refers to the actual niche in which the human or other animal with a brain dwells and adapts.
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