In anthropology, we recognize that there are many ways people have of knowing things. Human knowledge is very diverse. For instance, you might know that fingernails are softer than metal because as a child you accidentally stapled through your fingernail while doing an art project (a coauthor of this chapter once experienced this). This would be an example of knowledge you gained through experience. You might also know that inserting a knife into an electrical outlet is dangerous and could harm your health. Hopefully you know this not from personal experience, but through instruction from parents, teachers, and others in your social group. The degree to which humans rely on and benefit from the experiential knowledge of others is an important characteristic of what makes us human!
A unified way of knowing that is shared by a group of people and is used to explain and predict phenomena is called a knowledge system. Human knowledge systems are diverse and reflect the wide range of cultures and societies throughout the world and through time.
Science and religion are both knowledge systems and it is useful to understand how they differ. The type of knowledge gained from science is oftentimes called scientific understanding. As we have explored in the previous section, scientific understanding can change and relies on evidence and rigorous, repeated testing. Religious ways of knowing are called belief, which is different from scientific understanding because it does not require repeated testing or validation (although it can rely on observations and experiences). Instead, religious belief relies on trust and faith.
Since the beginning of the discipline, anthropologists have been interested in understanding religion because it can be important to understanding human cultures. However, religion (as well as magic, witchcraft, and other faith-based traditions) has proven notoriously difficult to define from an anthropological perspective, partly because there are so many religious practices and beliefs throughout the world that play different roles in people’s lives. For instance, some religions have multiple supernatural deities or gods, such as Hinduism, while others have hardly any supernatural elements, such as Buddhism. Some have beliefs that relate to energies and powers found in certain objects, animals, and people, while others place faith in ancestors and collective cultural heritage. Some religions provide instruction on nearly every day-to-day activity a person does, while others provide merely a rough framework for how one should act and behave. Emile Durkheim (1858-1917), an early social scientist, offered a definition of religion as “a unified set of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden — beliefs and practices which unite [into] one single moral community, all those who adhere to them” (Durkheim 2008).
Different individuals, cultures and societies may place more value on one type of knowing than another, although most use a combination that includes science and religion. In fact, in the early twentieth century, Bronisław Malinowski (1884-1942), an important early anthropologist, concluded that all societies use religion and science in some way or another. These are common ways that humans have of knowing our world.
In contemporary societies such as the United States, science and (some) religions conflict on the topic of human origins. Nearly every culture and society has a unique origin story that explains where they came from and how they came to be who they are today. These stories are often integrated into the culture’s religious belief system. Many anthropologists are interested in faith-based origin stories and other beliefs because they show us how a particular group of people explain the world and their place in it. Anthropologists also value scientific understanding as the basis for how humans vary biologically and change over time. In other words, anthropologists value the multiple knowledge systems of different groups and use them to understand the human condition in a broad and inclusive way.
It is also important to note that scientists often depend on the local knowledge of the people they work with to help them understand elements of the natural or physical world that science has not yet investigated. Many groups, including indigenous peoples, know about the world through prolonged relationships with the environment. Indigenous knowledge systems—those ways of knowing about and explaining the world that are specific to an indigenous community or group—are informed by their own empirical observation of a specific environment and passed down over generations.
While religion and indigenous knowledge systems may play a complementary role in helping anthropologists understand the human condition, they are distinct from science. The anthropological subdiscipline of biological anthropology is based on scientific ways of knowing about humans and human origins. In this text we will exclusively explore what science tells us about how humans came to be and why we are the way we are today. Therefore, you do not need to believe in evolution to master this material, because belief is not a scientific way of knowing. For this textbook, you only need to understand the scientific perspective(s) of evolution.
Throughout our lives, each of us work to reconcile and integrate into our worldview the different ways we have of knowing things. This is part of our lifelong intellectual journey. It is also, in our opinion, one of the most exciting parts of learning. We are pleased you have joined us on this journey of knowledge about humanity and yourself! Welcome!
Review Questions
- What are some key approaches to anthropological research?
- How has the discipline of anthropology changed over time?
- What are some similarities and differences between the subdisciplines? How does the “fifth subdiscipline” of applied anthropology fit within the larger discipline of anthropology?
- What are some subfields of biological anthropology and what do those anthropologists study?
- What is science? What is the scientific method? How does science compare to other ways of knowing?
