“Anthropology is the most humanistic of the
sciences and the most scientific of the humanities”
If we are to
apply our evolutionary advantage as a species, we must recognize that humanity
is both the observer and participant in the evolutionary process of life on the
planet Earth. This is the power of the Anthropological perspective.
Anthropology, as a science, seeks to understand how we have become the dominant
biological organism on the planet. Anthropology, as humanity, seeks to
understand how we view ourselves as individuals and as individuals living in
societies through time.
The most
humanistic of the sciences means that as human beings we attempt to understand
the workings of the universe that we have inherited, through human eyes. We
seek this understanding by describing the elements that we experience through
our human senses. From these observations, we construct mental models of the
universe we discover; and in the process, we discovered a “STRUCTURE” for the
universe.
As the most scientific of the humanities, we seek to understand the
dynamic of these structures through our observations and, in the process,
ascribe “FUNCTION” to the elements. In FUNCTION, we discover Purpose and
Meaning. However, over time and space, we discover as humans, that these
elements can be combined into different patterns. We also observe that our idea
of Function is relative to our experience with a given Structure. We embody our
experience in the Meanings we assign to structures and their elements. We label
this as “CULTURE.” A hallmark of
anthropology is Cultural relativity, i.e. the meanings of structures and events
are relative to the observer’s experience.
As organic
beings, we have a unique ability to be self-reflective. We share our
reflections with others through Language. Language is a meta-phenomenon that
encodes our experience into a set of signs and symbols that shares “Meaning”.
We express our discoveries, experiences, and feelings through the physical
signs and symbols we create and share with others. Humans experience not only discover the
“purpose” of structural elements, but also the part(s) they play in creating
and maintaining the larger structures of which they are a part. We, as humans, discover and seek “MEANING” to
the purpose. As a self-reflective species, we seek our meanings from
explanation about how these structures apply to us, personally, collectively (a
part of society), and as a species (among all species).
“Meaning” expresses “purpose” in a relativistic
way. It explains the links we find in nature in terms of “cause to effect”. It
provides the answer to the old philosophical question, “If a tree falls in the
woods, does it matter if no one hears it?” From the Human perspective, the
answer is “No.” If we cannot, or do not experience, the event, for us the event
does not exist. The experience is not existential, only an ideational
possibility. Scientifically, an ideational explanation of a experience without
physical evidence is a hypothesis, a belief based on a “best guess.” Again, an
example of CULTURAL RELATIVITY.
The recognition
of Cultural Relativity is one of the greatest discoveries of Anthropology.
While often underplayed in public discourse, it gives us an advantage over
other disciplines by recognizing the role of ethnocentrism as a part of the
human condition. Like all organisms, biologically we recognize our own species.
But, as a self-reflective animal, we separate ourselves as a clad or society
from others sharing our environment by attributing meanings and purposes to the
other in relations to us.
While this
feature of human life is so evident today, why is it that the anthropological
perspective has emerged in the last three centuries in the human mind only?
This is the questions that I will be addressing in future installments of this
blog.
