1.1: What is Anthropology?

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Introduction

We had our first look at what anthropology is in the definition on the previous page. Here it is again:

Definition: Anthropology

Anthropology is the study of humans in all aspects, times, and places; it is a holistic, comparative, and evolution-based discipline with a focus shaped by the concept of 'culture.'

The best way to better understand what anthropology is is to take a look at what anthropology does. That is, how does anthropology study humans? How is it 'holistic' and 'comparative?' What makes it evolution-based? What makes it focused on culture?

We will begin this chapter by starting with that last point. While we'll revisit "the culture concept" in more detail with cultural anthropology, we will begin with a generalized look at what we often mean when we use the term 'culture' so we can begin using it productively.

From there, we will begin to ask whether 'culture' is a bit too 'squishy' to be a useful 'theory.' Speaking of theories, we'll then look at science and other ways of knowing in some detail and use this to consider whether anthropology is a science.

Finally, we'll take a closer look at anthropology's particular way of knowing called holism. When we do, we will revisit the four fields (biological, social/cultural, archaeological, and linguistic) united by this concept in preparation for taking them on one-by-one in the following chapters.

Learning Objectives

After this section, you will be prepared to:

• Describe the key characteristics of culture.
• Contrast anthropology and related fields (e.g., sociology, psychology, philosophy, history, geography).
• Explain the scope of each of anthropology's four subfields.
• Describe the holistic nature of anthropology.
• Debate whether anthropology is a science.

Culture Basics

American anthropologist Franz Boas provided a definition of culture that we can still use today. There are many versions, but one well-suited to learning the basics of four-field anthropology is that culture is:

Definition: Culture

The system of shared values, beliefs, behaviors, and artifacts, transmitted from one generation to the next, that the members of a group use to cope with their world and with each another.

If you stop to think about things you consider to be "cultural," you will likely find that they fit within this definition. If you think of enough of these things, you'll also see there is a sort of pattern to what makes a culture. This pattern can be described by a few features of culture.

• It is 'inside' people's minds. Your hopes, beliefs, feelings, and aspirations reflect your culture.
• It involves your values. Your beliefs about who belongs and why, who you call your family, and what is morally right and wrong are part of your culture.
• It is automatic and it is routine. We cary out our culture without having to think about it. Culture is a sort of 'autopilot.' As a result,
• It is visible in our behaviors. Behaviors are one sort of 'data' anthropologists collect!
• It is visible in what we make. Things are another sort of 'data.' These are the symbols, products, and effects of our culture.
• It is 'embodied.' Our culture is never separate from us.

Anthropology uses scientific processes to collect data about all of these features. They do so to learn more about particular cultures and to learn more about 'culture' in general.

The Ouroboros

We are a way for the universe to know itself. Some part of our being knows this is where we came from. We long to return. And we can, because the cosmos is also within us. We're made of star-stuff.

—Carl Sagan

If we stop to think about it, there is something funny about humans studying humans. It shares some similarity to the way the astrophysicist Carl Sagan once noted his belief that "we are a way for the universe to know itself." We will see that 'humans studying humans' comes with its own set of problems. As one straightforward example for now, anthropologists better than anyone recognize the human tendency to classify things (including other people). In the meantime, you will find no shortage of classificatory systems within anthropology such as subsistence types, kinship systems, power structures, and so on. We even managed to to split the field itself into four subfields!

Illustration of an ouroboros dragon attributed to Theodoros Pelecanos from about 1478 CE.

This somewhat paradoxical tendency for something to consume itself is nothing new. Philosophers from all ages and cultures have struggled with 'epistemology' or theories of knowledge. Philosophy, like anthropology, science, or other cultural traditions (like religion) are each ways of knowing. What separates them is only what they claim to know about and how they believe they come to know it. Anthropology, is then one of many ways of knowing about ways of knowing. The what that anthropology seeks to know about is human beings and the how it claims to know it resembles the scientific method in many ways.

Definition: Epistemology

The philosophical study of knowledge. Theories of knowledge. The attempt to distinguish 'justified beliefs' from 'opinions.'

Because anthropology tries to know things about how humans know things, it can be helpfully described as an 'ouroboros.' The ouroboros is a symbol which depicts a creature (usually a serpent or dragon) consuming its own tail. One example can be seen in Figure 1 above. Similar symbols appear across many cultures. These symbols can represent many things including cycles (such as death and rebirth), infinity, or—as we have here—paradoxes. The ouroboros is a helpful way to think about paradoxes because it helps us from getting 'stuck' or hung up on the fact that we are in one. We could drive ourselves crazy thinking too hard about ourselves as the universe knowing itself, but being able to take a step back and recognize it for what it is is pretty cool. This sort of stepping back and recognizing both the cool thing about anthropology (or any related discipline) and, at the same time, the sort of problematic paradox built into it is called reflexivity.

Definition: Reflexivity

The practice, process, or ability to examine one's thoughts, feelings, assumptions, and biases and how they influence one's understanding and actions.

Over the following pages, we will look a bit at science and begin to ask whether we believe anthropology is a science. The reason we are doing this is so we are prepared to be reflexive. As a way of knowing, anthropology comes with a certain set of ideas about what we can know and how we can know it. Take one more look at the definition above. It is important to begin with these ideas because we can then better understand how they influence the understanding and actions of anthropologists.

Ways of Knowing

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. 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! Human knowledge systems are diverse and reflect the wide range of cultures and societies throughout the world and through time.

Definition: Knowledge System

A unified way of knowing that is shared by a group of people and is used to explain and predict phenomena.

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. Scientific understanding can change quickly 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. Religious belief relies on trust and faith. Note, however, that both can rely heavily on their own forms of observation and experience!

Since the beginning of the discipline, anthropologists have been interested in understanding religion because it can be important to understanding human cultures. However, religion 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 anthropologists 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. At the same time, anthropology recognizes that they are not incompatible with science. This sometimes means anthropologists must donn different 'hats' as they do anthropology. Sometimes, they wear an 'evolutionary biologist' hat. Sometime they wear an 'ethnographer' hat. Sometimes they wear a 'religious history' hat, 'philosopher' hat, or 'folklorist' hat. This practice should not be new to you even though you have not yet learned how to do anthropology! Throughout our lives, each of us works to reconcile and integrate into our worldview the different ways we have of knowing things. This is part of our lifelong intellectual journey.

Example

Despite contentious relationships with 'science' at various points in its long history (viz. Copernicus), the Roman Catholic Church provides one example of compatible religious and scientific knowledge. In a 1996 address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Pope John Paul II noted the significant evidence supporting the theory of evolution as "more than a hypothesis." However, he maintained the Catholic Church's teaching that the human soul is not a product of material evolution. John Paul II maintained that the soul is still created and provided to humans directly by God. This reconciles the views of evolutionary science and Catholic teaching by saying that while the human body may have evolved, the spiritual soul's origins lie in divine creation.

This is a rather elegant approach. It is also a good example here because it demonstrates that the religion involved and the science involved are two separate ways of knowing and they ultimately are looking to know different things. Science is a way of knowing about the physical world, while the pope's concern was with the spiritual world.

Example

Anishinaabe and other indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) is a spiritual way of knowing which sees the environment not as a collection of resources but as a web of relational beings. Plants, animals, water, and land are all treated as having agency and a spirit. "Knowing" the environment has a great deal more to do with learning how to best respect these beings based on their cycles and relationships to one another.

In some ways, this is the more difficult example to understand in terms of 'reconciling' ways of knowing simply because scientific approaches have begun to catch up to TEK. TEK's emphases on relationships and duties to the land parallels environmental science's descriptions of ecosystem interdependence and the need for conservation and biodiversity and TEK's knowledge from generations of observation and use parallels science's data collection and experimentation.

Science for Anthropologists

The scientific method is a way of learning about the world around us. Many people think of science as taking place in a sterile laboratory, and sometimes it does, but it can also occur many other places, such as at a research station in Ethiopia, a field site in Tanzania, and a market square in El Salvador. To understand how information is established, it is important to recognize what science is (and is not) as well as understand how the scientific method works.

What is Science?

Science combines our natural (human) curiosity with our ability to experiment so we can understand the world around us. In turn, science can be used to address needs in our communities. Thanks to science, meteorologists can predict the weather and, it takes only a relatively small number of farmers to grow enough food to feed our large population, our medicine continues to improve, and over 90% of Americans have a cell phone.

Anyone can participate in science—not just academics. In fact, children are often some of the best scientists. An early, well-known psychologist, Jean Piaget (1896–1980), argued that a child is a “little scientist,” internally motivated to experiment and explore their world. This can be seen when an infant repeatedly drops a toy to see if the parent will pick it up, or when a four-year-old sincerely asks “why” again and again. Maria Montessori (1870–1952), an Italian doctor and educator (and somewhat of an anthropologist) was interested in how children learn. Through her research, she recognized that children have natural scientific tendencies. Children have a desire to explore their environment, ask questions, use their imaginations, and learn by doing. In 1907, Montessori opened a school to foster children’s natural desire to learn this way. This developed a child-centered teaching method that has spread around the world and is being used in over 22,000 schools today. In anthropology and other scientific fields, the process of learning is more formalized, but scientists still benefit from the curiosity that motivates children and still experience the thrill of discovery.

Science represents both a body of knowledge and the process for learning that knowledge (the scientific method). Scientific claims can, at times, be difficult to distinguish from other information. Science also incorporates a broad range of methods to collect data, adding to the difficulty of knowing what science really is. This section of the chapter will address four key characteristics that help define and recognize science:

1. science studies the physical and natural world and how it works,
2. scientific explanations must be testable and refutable,
3. science relies on empirical evidence,
4. science involves the scientific community.

Note that the goal of science is what we call 'knowledge.' We do not have time here to debate that term. What we do have time to notice, however, is that there is a belief counterpart to each of these characteristics of scientific knowledge:

1. studies of spiritual or supernatural worlds and how they work,
2. explanations are accepted on faith or some other discretely rational system,
3. relies on speculation, feeling, sentiment, or 'pure reasoning,'
4. is done alone or relies on a different community.

This second list is worth pointing out because it is important to recognize that there is nothing inherently 'wrong' with some other approach to trying to understand things. Where we get into trouble is when we treat systems of belief as science when they are not. Science is also a firmly-established way of knowing in the modern/Western world. It therefore privileges its own approaches. An example might help this make more sense. We often hear about "debates" between creationists (those who believe the universe and living organisms originate from specific acts of divine creation, as in the biblical account, rather than by natural processes such as evolution) and evolutionary scientists. In reality, there can be no such debate. While the two 'sides' might agree with number 1 regarding science above, creationists are on the second list for numbers 2–4. In order to engage in debate, the two would have to start on the same foundation in place. (This is, in fact, partly what is meant by science #4 above!)

If it does not meet all characteristics of science, it is not science.

Our physical and natural universe ranges from very small (e.g., electrons) to the very large (e.g., Earth itself and galaxies beyond it). Scientists often design their research to address how and why natural forces influence our physical and natural world.

There are very few questions that are considered off-limits in science. That being said, the scope of scientific investigation is generally focused on natural phenomena and natural processes and excludes the 'supernatural.' (By definition, the word 'supernatural' literally means 'beyond natural.') People often regard the supernatural, whether it be a ghost, luck, or gods, as working outside the laws of the universe, which makes it impossible to study with a scientific approach. Science neither supports nor contradicts the existence of supernatural powers—it simply does not include the supernatural in its explanations.

Exercise

Consider the following. Two anthropologist are discussing why they think humans share food. The first argues that we are evolutionary predisposed to share with those within our group and withhold from those who are not within our group. She has noticed every species of primate she has observed do the same thing. The second anthropologist argues it is about 'social forces' (which manifest like feelings of guilt or fear of gossiping) compel us to share. She has felt these forces herself! And the people she has interviewed describe feeling like the spirits of their ancestors are holding them accountable. This feeling pressure doesn't work with outsiders, because they don't feel the same social forces (nobody cares about an outsider's gossip). The first points out that this might be true, but evolution helps explain why this happens on a neurological and hormonal level. They carry on in this way for some time and decide they are probably both right to some extent but need more data.

• How are the observations of these two anthropologists alike and different from the observations you know about from sciences like chemistry or physics?
• What types of additional questions do you think this conversation would generate?
• What types of data could they collect or what types of tests/experiments could they perform to address these questions?
• How do these two fit into the four criteria for science?

Scientific explanations must be testable and refutable. The goal of scientists is to identify a research question and then identify the best answer(s) to that question. For example, an excavation of a prehistoric cemetery may reveal that many of the people buried there had unhealed fractures when they died, and the lead anthropologist may ask, “Why did this population experience more broken bones than their neighbors?” There might be multiple explanations to address this question, such as a lack of calcium in their diets, participation in dangerous work, or violent conflict with neighbors; these explanations are considered hypotheses.

Definition: Hypothesis

An explanation of observed facts, relying on a scientist's knowledge-based experiences and background research, stating how and why observed phenomena are the way they are.

Good hypotheses generate expectations that are testable. For example, if the best explanation regarding our prehistoric population was that they were experiencing violent conflict with their neighbors, we should expect to find clues, like weapons or protective walls around their homes, in the anthropological record to support this. Alternatively, if this population did not experience violent conflict with their neighbors, we may eventually be able to gather enough evidence to rule out (refute) this explanation. An important part of science is rigorous testing.

Science does not prove any hypothesis. However, a strong hypothesis is one that has strong supporting evidence and has not yet been disproved.

Science relies on empirical evidence. The word “empirical” refers to experience that is verified by observation (rather than evidence that derives primarily from logic, reason, or theory). The most reliable studies are based on accurately and precisely recorded observations. Scientists value studies that explain exactly which methods were used, so their data collection and analysis processes are reproducible. This allows for other scientists to expand the study or provide new insights into the observations.

Science involves the scientific community. Good science is not carried out in isolation in a secret basement laboratory. It is done as part of a community. Scientists pay attention to what others have done before them, present new ideas to each other, and publish in scientific journals. Most scientific research is collaborative, bringing together researchers with different types of specialized knowledge to work on a shared project. Today, thanks to technology, scientific projects can bring together researchers from different backgrounds, experiences, locations, and perspectives. Working within a scientific community supports one of the most valuable aspects of science: that science is self-correcting. Science that is openly communicated with others allows for a system with checks and balances: competing explanations can be proposed and questionable studies can be reevaluated. Ultimately, the goal is that the best explanations will stand the test of time.

The Scientific Method

Most textbooks present the scientific method as a simple linear, or perhaps circular, process. We easily recognize that the process begins with making observations about the natural world. Another important step is the selection or development of a scientific hypothesis. From the hypothesis a set of predictions can be made, which are then tested by experimentation or by making additional observations.

This relatively simple version of the scientific method highlights the key aspects that should be present in any scientific research experiment or scientific paper. However, this simplistic view of the scientific method does not accurately represent the dynamic and creative side of science, nor does it highlight the complex steps that are incorporated into a scientist’s routine. Remember the ouroboros: humans are curious creatures; it makes sense that we developed a method of knowing about the world based on our curiosity!

Two key components lacking in the simple version of the scientific method are exploration and discovery. There are many reasons that a scientist might choose a particular research question: they may be motivated by personal experience, struck by something they read about, or inspired by a student’s question in class. Often scientific research reveals more questions than answers, so experienced researchers rarely lack problems to solve. But identifying a research question is just part of the process; most scientists spend more time exploring the literature, sharing ideas, asking questions, and planning their research project than conducting the test itself.

There are actually many paths to scientific discovery. Scientific ideas have many possible starting points and influences, and scientists often repeat "steps" and circle back around. Gathering evidence does not always rest on experiments in the laboratory. Evaluating data is not always clear-cut, and results are sometimes surprising or inconclusive. Many important discoveries were in fact made by mistake. For example, engineer Percy Spencer accidentally melted a chocolate bar in his pocket with a magnetron, which became the first microwave, and Spencer Silver invented the adhesive for 3M Post-it ® notes while trying to develop a strong glue. The real scientific process is more similar to the philosophy of the animated television character Ms. Frizzle from The Magic School Bus, “Take chances, make mistakes, get messy.”

Science itself is a social enterprise that is influenced by cultural issues and values (as well as funding priorities). For example, corporations are the biggest funders of scientific research, followed next by government agencies like the National Science Foundation. Those organizations have great influence on what is considered valuable research at any given time.

Exercise

As an example of cultural values influencing the financial support of science, there are many diseases that the World Health Organization (WHO) has classified as "neglected tropical diseases," including dengue, leprosy, rabies, and hookworm, that affect an estimated 1 billion people, mostly in impoverished areas. These debilitating diseases can be just as deadly as diseases that receive more attention, like AIDS and tuberculosis, but these tropical diseases receive comparatively little funding when it comes to research, drug development, and health care development (Farmer et al. 2013).

Why do you think this is? What does this suggest about the priorities, culture, or biases of those funding this medical research?

Scientists also value interactions within the scientific community. This includes informal discussions over a cup of coffee as well as formal interactions, such as presenting at conferences and engaging in scholarly peer review. Scholarly peer review is the process where an author’s work must pass the scrutiny of other experts in the field before being published in a journal or book. This helps keep scientists accountable for ethically responsible research projects and papers—but it's never perfect. Additionally, presenting data at conferences and in articles and books allows researchers to potentially receive critical feedback from academic peers and others to test these ideas and further the field of science toward identifying the best explanations. Note the emphasis on continued scrutiny and revision!

Scientific investigation occurs at many levels, from investigating individual cases to understanding processes that affect most of us. We see examples of this particularly in the field of medicine: What is causing this child’s mysterious illness? What is the ideal amount of sleep for an adult? All of these questions generate different types of important testable scientific explanations. We have seen that hypotheses are typically explanations that address a narrow set of phenomena. In anthropology, we might limit a hypothesis to a particular cultural group or population.

Definition: Theory

An explanation of observations that address a wide range of phenomena.

But sometimes, astrophysics want to talk about all matter, biologists want to talk about all living things, and we anthropologists want to talk about all humans. A theory, then, is an explanation of observations that addresses a wide range of phenomena. Like hypotheses, theories also explain how or why something occurs, rely on empirical evidence, and are testable and able to be refuted. Because the term theory is often used casually outside of science, you may hear people try to dismiss a scientific claim as “just a theory.” In science there are often multiple competing theories, but over time some are eliminated. The best theories are those which best explain the most evidence. Scientific theories that have stood the test of time are thus supported by many lines of evidence and remain reliable for forming predictions.

Some well-tested theories accepted by most scientists include the theory of general relativity, which explains the law of gravitation and its relation to other forces, and evolutionary theory, which describes how heritable traits can change in a population over time.

Definition: Law

A statement of prediction about what will happen given certain conditions.

While scientific hypotheses and theories share many characteristics, laws are quite different. A law is a prediction about what will happen given certain conditions, not an explanation for how or why it happens. A law is not a version of a theory or one which is broadly accepted. Despite its broad acceptance across the scientific community, evolutionary theory will never be the 'law of evolution' because we cannot construct a predictive conditional statement. We may, however, some day be able to express certain elements of evolution as laws given enough data.

Perhaps the best example of a scientific law is still Newton’s universal law of gravity. The law allows us to predict the gravitational force between any two objects using an equation, but it does not explain why gravity works. Newton also gave us the 'three laws of motion.' Laws are important, and their discovery often promotes the development of theories.

Example

The ancient Greek mathematician and inventor Archimedes discovered that the buoyant force on an object submerged in a fluid is equal to the weight of the fluid displaced by the object. Today this is known as Archimedes' Buoyancy Principle. (For our purposes, a principle is just a type of law.) This law is useful for many things, including density calculations and designing ships. Purportedly, Archimedes made this discovery when he noticed the water level rise in his bathtub as he climbed in it. Realizing its importance, he is said to have shouted "Eureka" and proceeded to run naked through the city of Syracuse. While this is a fun story (and may not be true), it does remain that scientific laws, alongside scientific hypotheses and theories, do have a very important role in the scientific process and in generating scientific explanations about our natural world.

Archimedes is portrayed here having just discovered his Principle of Buoyancy. The vignette is by Count Giammaria Mazzuchelli (1707–1765).

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Summary of the Scientific Method

Simplified diagram of the Scientific Method. Define Problem, to Develop Hypothesis, to Collect Data, to Organize & Analyze Data, to Reach a Conclusion (either Accept or Reject the Hypothesis). From Accept Hypothesis to Share Results, to Define Problem. From Reject Hypothesis to Develop Hypothesis.

1. Define the Problem. This is based on observation—either something you've observed from nature or from something that's already been written.
2. Develop Hypothesis. Propose a testable explanation for the observed phenomenon.
3. Collect Data. Develop and run an experiment to test the hypothesis. The experiment provides data as to whether the hypothesis is supported or not.
4. Organize Data & Analyze Results. As it sounds. Turn the raw data into a coherent narrative—answer how the data supports or refutes the hypothesis.
5. Develop Conclusion. Develop a statement that sums up what the data (collected during the experimental phase) says about the hypothesis.
6. Share Knowledge. Share whether your hypothesis was reported. Especially important if it wasn't!

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• Science does not "prove" anything. Hypotheses are falsified or supported.
• For a hypothesis to be accepted into theory—a generally accepted explanation of specific phenomena—it undergoes rigorous testing.
• Contradictory supported-hypotheses are possible; some refer to this as equifinality. The data collected support two (or more) hypotheses and, in most cases, there is not sufficient data to support one hypothesis more than the other. The hope is to eventually have enough evidence to overwhelmingly support one particular hypothesis.