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Re: IS ANTHROPOLOGY A SCIENCE?DETA
Fred Pearl (fred@ACS.TAMU.EDU)
Fri, 26 Apr 1996 06:50:59 -0500
>...in my opinion, of Mark Shapiro's
>THE SOCIOBIOLOGY OF HOMO SAPIENS. The latter presents a unifying theory
>which has genuine application to the immense body of utterly diverse and
>disorganized detail anthropology has provided us. Yet the work has received
>no attention, to my knowledge. Mo one seems to be aware it exists.
Shapiro's book has been ignored because it is not very good. Truly, it is
filled with short chaapters that are at best thoughtful, but usually not
very helpful. OOther books I think have shown much better the systhesis you
refer to. Try Winterhalder and Smith's, Evolutionary Ecology and Human
Behavior (1992). Yet I would still argue that anthropology has been science
long before behavioral ecologists (sociobiologists) came around. I think
you would have a hard time reading Steward or White and saying it was not
science. In fact, if you read any good survey of anthropological theory you
will discover that through testing of hypotheses, both our methods and
theory have become refined, as you would expect from the scientific
approach.
Fred
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