Anthropology QuotesThe historical development of the work of anthropologists seems to single out clearly a domain of knowledge that heretofore has not been treated by any other science.  Anthropologists are a connecting link between poets and scientists; though their field-work among primitive peoples has often made them forget the language of science. In some ways being a parent is like being an anthropologist who is studying a primitive and isolated tribe by living with them. Anthropology was the science that gave her the platform from which she surveyed, scolded and beamed at the world. Anthropology is the only discipline that can access evidence about the entire human experience on this planet. Studying anthropology, I developed a kind of holistic view of human existence, in which the dichotomies you listed are all necessary and vital aspects of life. Younger anthropologists have the notion that anthropology is too diverse. The number of things done under the name of anthropology is just infinite; you can do anything and call it anthropology. There is no shorter path for joining a neutral existential anthropology, according to philosophy, with the existential decision before God, according to the Bible. The purpose of anthropology is to make the world safe for human differences. If there were a science of human beings it would be anthropology that aims at understanding the totality of experience through structural context. History is, strictly speaking, the study of questions; the study of answers belongs to anthropology and sociology. Every historian has informally an anthropology, without ever using the word. Cultural anthropology is more and more rapidly getting to realize itself as a strictly historical science. Anthropology is the science which tells us that people are the same the whole world over - except when they are different. Anthropology is the most humanistic of the sciences and the most scientific of the humanities. |
