A history of Anthropological Theory

Recently I have read the following book. Its main points are:

Book title: Paul Erickson and Liam Murphy.2003. A history of Anthropological Theory. Peterborough, Ont.; Orchard Park, NY: Broadview Press, c1998.

Main points:

Introduction: anthropology was divided into 4 subfields. First was physical or biological anthropology which included paleoanthropologist. Second was the study of artifact. The third was linguistic anthropology. The 4^th was cultural or sociocultural, the study of human lifeways. (17) Arguably there was a 5^th subfield: applied anthropology. (18)

- in this book anthropological theory could be considered to be a branch of science, humanism, or religion. (19) In science, people and god were treated as secondary to nature. In humanism, god and nature are treated as secondary to people: “Man is the measure of all things.” In Religion, nature and people were treated as secondary to god. (19) God created ‘heaven and earth’. (20)

- anthropology could be seen as searching for answers to fundamental questions asked: “were did we come from?”, “why do we differ?” Therefore, all people had their own version of anthropology. This book derived from the western cultivation. (20)

- part one – the early history of anthropological theory - anthropology in Antiquity - in common with all western academic disciplines, the roots of anthropology lied in the intellectual traditions of the Greco-Roman “ancient” world.(21) Greco-Roman civilization produced several Classical intellectual traditions. Some traditions seem scientific, while others appeared more humanistic or religious. (21) The root of anthropology could be found in classical science. (22)

- the first group of classical thinkers was philosophers whose thought predated that of Socrates. The pre-Socratics were really cosmologist. Some of their speculations were materialistic, meaning that they invoked natural rather than supernatural cause. (22) Pre-Socratics philosophers saw people created by nature, not god. (22)

- in the 5^th BC, there was a major changed in Greek and shift in thought leading to new philosophical schools. One new school was Sophistry.  They taught practical skills (i.e. not for objective knowledge or absolute truth). Sophist Protagoras believed that human behavior was influenced by life circumstance. Behavior is a cultural convention, similar to the 20th century cultural relativism. (23)

- for some sophist relativism led to nihilism, the doctrine that nothing existed or was knowable. Feeling that knowledge was merely what was said to be true by people in power: an idea similar to the key part of Marxism. (23) (or Foucault) Some Athenian philosophers were opposing to sophistry. Socrates thought that there were universal values. Plato, his student, agreed that there was universal values existed because they were innate in the human mind. (23) (c/f. John Locke: clean paper human nature).

- Plato’s student was curious about the relationship among natural and social objects, his legacy included science. (24) Later Greek life and thought declined. (Shifted to Roman) Competing schools of thought emerged. Stoics believed that nature and society were highly orderly. This order was not created by people or god, but was a natural cosmic order. Sometimes called Logos. (25) A belief in a universals social order made it possible to compare and contrast particular social orders, a fundamental task of what today we called social science. (24) Contrary to Plato, Stoics believed in ‘blank state’, meaning that knowledge was not innate. (24)

- toward the end of the Roman Empire social conditions deteriorated. Several religions competed for appeal to the socially oppressed; all built on the Stoic idea of an overarching supernatural order in the universe.  They preached obedience to divine rather than civil laws. Outpacing competition, Christianity gained converts and became the state religion of Rome. (25) For anthropology, the most consequential Church father was Saint Augustine. According to Augustine, god was perfect and human nature was sinful. Human behavior was to be judged not by people or nature, but by god. (25) (saw the rise of god)

- the legacy of Antiquity to anthropology was the establishment of the humanistic, religious, and scientific intellectual outlook. These outlooks, especially the scientific outlook, had been preserved in anthropology ever since. (26)

- the Middle Ages: - in the period following Augustine’s death, Roman Empire was occupied by non-Christian ‘barbarian’. The Christian tradition flourished in the eastern Roman at Constantinople. (26) The interaction between Islam and Christianity occurred on the 8^th century when Islamic moors invaded Christian Spain. Christian theology became increasingly ‘rational’ meaning that human reason was brought to bear on theological issues. This trend culminated in the theology of Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas reasoned that people could, and should know god through knowing nature. (27)

- inevitably, cracks in the whole system surfaced, scholars began to choose. Once this happened the door was open for anthropology to develop. (27) Three complex events produced knowledge that, outside Thomas Aquinas circles, made the syntheses unravel. These events were the renaissance, voyages of geographic discovery, and the scientific revolution. (27)

- renaissance thinkers came to realize that the Ancients possessed a fuller and more satisfying grasp of human nature than the Christians. Renaissance interest in the ancient world produced a new sense of time which no longer was static, but capable of changes. This realization led to systematic contrast of ancient and medieval ways of life and, in turn, to question the authority of the medieval catholic church. This contributed to the protestant reform movement. (28) A paramount reason for the change of medieval into modern times was the scientific revolution, as a method of intellectual investigation. (34)

- epistemology was the branch of philosophy that explored the nature of knowledge. Two major epistemologies emerged. One is deduction. The most famous architect to deduction was Cartesian: ‘I exit, therefore god exit, therefore the real world exists’. (34) The second epistemology was induction, the process of discovering the general explanation. (34) ( facts led to the truth)

- the Enlightenment was the name given for the time period from Newton’s principle of mathematics to the time of the French revolution in 1789. Intellectual produced key concepts of social science, in anthropology the most important of these concept was culture. (37) “Newton believed that god has created the universe while, unlike a theistic philosopher, he did not invoke god to account for its day-to-day machinations. Metaphorically, the Newtonian universe was a clock, god the clockmaker.” (38)

- the most important part of Locke’s epistemology for anthropology was his idea, resurrected from the ancient Stoics, that the mind of each newborn person was a ‘blank stage’. (38)

- aping the accomplishment of Newton, some enlightenment intellectuals sought to discover ‘laws’ of human history (universal historians). According to Locke, human experience was understood to have accumulated as culture. (39)

- Vico described how humanity had passed through the three stages of god, heroes, and man. Turgot described the passage of humanity though the 3 stages of hunting, pastoralism, and farming. (39)

- the French revolution overthrew the upper-class privilege, unleashing a new middle class, the bourgeoisie. (40)

- the revolution was fought on the basis of enlightenment ideals that insisted on the human capacity for moral and intellectual progress and, ultimately perfection. When the revolution turned out badly, European intellectual turned their backs on these ideals. The result was a rise in conservative attitudes. (40) (c/f similar to pondering over science after the Titanic sinking) (or science and the brutality of the WWII)

- conservatism appeared in a number of guises. One was fundamentalist Christianity. Many new Christian denominations develop, espousing ‘Evangelical’. Newton’s clockmaker god was replaced by god of divine intervention. (41) Another guise of conservation was romanticism that glorified non-rational, emotional side of human nature, and denied the primacy of Cartesian thought. Finally there was the racism (c/f nationalism). (41)

- conservatism also affected social science. Social scientists also felt that it was time to put more emphasize on stability. The result was the all-encompassing philosophy of Positivism. Positivism was the creation of Augustine Comet.  He described how almost all branches of knowledge had passed through three stages: theological, metaphysical, and positive. Theological was to explain thing in terms of deities, metaphysics on abstract concepts, and in the positive stage, in terms of science. (41)

- in 1859, British geologist Charles Lyell marked the first scientific consensus about the great time depth of prehistory and was the symbolic birth of the science of prehistoric archaeology. (58) Like cultural evolutionist, archaeologist used the comparative method to reconstruct the prehistory past. (58)

(to be continued)