Post by Tukuler al~Takruri on May 26, 2010 12:56:59 GMT -5
How can all these refereed peer reviewed reports we so much
rely on for support of our claims not all lead down one path to
the same conclusion or at least come to a consensus on issues
within the field?
Because anthropology is a science.
Only with pseudo-science or discrete belief systems do we find all
"scholarship" agreeing on science matters that dovetail social ones.
Science is an objective systematic aquisiton of factual knowledge.
Just what is its system? Being cumulative and self-correcting. No
scientific scholar's view is always or forever right or preferable to
another's view.
Disagreeing views can both stand as long as they were arrived at by
adhering to a methodology that drew its conclusion from defining a
problem and reviewing healthy portions of whatever available lierature
addresses it. This allows them to formulate a hypothesis to put to the
test after collecting relevant data.
Scientific facts are publicly verifiable and testable. Any one qualified
should be able to reproduce the same results of the tested hypothesis
which must be falsifiable. That is, there must be some case that can
conceivably make a propositon false instead of true.
If not both replicable and falsifiable, a claim is pseudo scientific no
matter how couched in scientific sounding terminology. Of course
philosophy, religion, and such don't purport to be science and are
not under these strict requirements. Nor should they be substituted
for science.
Anthropology -- the scientific study of the human species -- has
various branches each in turn having a number of subdivions.
Here are some of the major ones.
Accounts of ancient history are substantially simplified popularizations
derived from the finds of anthropology. But then history also has other
elements that in the end can make it propaganda biased in favor of the
views of the teller tailored for his subject audience.
rely on for support of our claims not all lead down one path to
the same conclusion or at least come to a consensus on issues
within the field?
Because anthropology is a science.
Only with pseudo-science or discrete belief systems do we find all
"scholarship" agreeing on science matters that dovetail social ones.
Science is an objective systematic aquisiton of factual knowledge.
Just what is its system? Being cumulative and self-correcting. No
scientific scholar's view is always or forever right or preferable to
another's view.
Disagreeing views can both stand as long as they were arrived at by
adhering to a methodology that drew its conclusion from defining a
problem and reviewing healthy portions of whatever available lierature
addresses it. This allows them to formulate a hypothesis to put to the
test after collecting relevant data.
Scientific facts are publicly verifiable and testable. Any one qualified
should be able to reproduce the same results of the tested hypothesis
which must be falsifiable. That is, there must be some case that can
conceivably make a propositon false instead of true.
If not both replicable and falsifiable, a claim is pseudo scientific no
matter how couched in scientific sounding terminology. Of course
philosophy, religion, and such don't purport to be science and are
not under these strict requirements. Nor should they be substituted
for science.
Anthropology -- the scientific study of the human species -- has
various branches each in turn having a number of subdivions.
Here are some of the major ones.
- Archaeology
- prehistorical archaelogy
- historical archaeology (only if the subjects were literate)
- prehistorical archaelogy
- Biological Anthropology
- forensic antropology
- genetics
- paleo-anthropology
- physical anthropology
- primatology
- forensic antropology
- Cultural Anthropology
- ethnography
- ethnology (actual fieldwork living with the subjects)
- ethnography
- Linguistics
- descriptive linguistics
- historical linguistics
- socio-linguistics
- descriptive linguistics
Accounts of ancient history are substantially simplified popularizations
derived from the finds of anthropology. But then history also has other
elements that in the end can make it propaganda biased in favor of the
views of the teller tailored for his subject audience.