ANTH 3690 Study Guide - Blackfoot Confederacy, James George Frazer, Ruth Landes
9 Dec 2014
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The former we will call the scientific position; the latter we refer to as postmodernist. (moberg) Foundations of science established in 1600s as empiricism: all truthful knowledge originates in observation; science is privileged over other ways of knowing. objectivity; replicability; induction; and progress. Popper falsification, progress akin to natural selection (darwin) Kuhn talking about natural sciences but taken up by social scientists. All theories are derived from underlying paradigms; unstated world views that set the standards for scientific investigation. Change in paradigm is revolutionary (contrary to previous ideas about building and progress0. Moberg sets up a dichotomy between scientific anthropologists and postmodernists, this is an oversimplification. Anthropology as an academic discipline dates from the 1870s, but its roots extend to classical antiquity. Classical greek and roman accounts of non-mediterranean people were highly ethnocentric, eg barbarian was coined to refer to those who did not speak greek.
