Anthropology 2226A/B Lecture 12: Anthropology Lecture Notes Part Two December 1 2016
10 Dec 2016
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Document Summary
On the non-reductive core of anthropology: nature/culture or how. Science manages to give little answers to big questions. Everything they do is rendered meaningful within a contextualizing environment of economy, social relations and ideas. That environment changes rapidly and not only do humans change to fit it but the practice of science and biological anthropology changes with it as well. Marks suggests that particular adaptions are not what characterize the human condition: some of which are very subtle. The human condition if characterized by the extent to which our intelligence and long periods of growth and immaturity allow us to be adaptable. Natural selection molds the gene pools of species to conform to the stresses of the environment: the adaptions wrought by natural selection are long term and largely irreversible. That is what we generally mean by adaption in an evolutionary sense.
