The Beginning of Anthropology

An artifact of late 19th Century Western Civilization

The Beginning of Anthropology

Shift in Weltanschauung from idea that human beings are “apart from nature” to the idea that we are “a part of nature.”

Just a little shift in prepositions!

Although to many, Charles Darwin exemplifies this shift….

Before Darwin’s Origin of Species, there was Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation by Anonymous. A current book, Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and Secret Authorship of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation by James A. Secord, charts the Weltanschauung of the 19th Century society in which evolutionary theory and the social and behavioral sciences began to develop in modern form.

The Beginning of Anthropology

The EnlightenmentPrecursors John Locke (1632-1704)

George Berkeley (1685-1753)

idealism: nothing, including material objects, exists apart from perception;external objects are ultimately collections of ideas and sensations

The Beginning of Anthropology

The Enlightenment

Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790)

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)

Discourses on the Sciences and the Arts (1751) A Discourse upon the Origin and Foundation of the Inequality Among Mankind (1755) - known as the Second Discourse

The Social Contract (1762)

The Beginning of Anthropology

The Industrial Revolution

Shift in production from animate energy to inanimate energy.

Population increase….social transformations…..social unrest

The Beginning of Anthropology

Other disciplines with similar origins:

Sociology - Auguste Comte 1798-1857; Emil Durkheim

Economics - Adam Smith (1723-1790); David Ricardo; Karl Marx

Psychology - Wilhelm Wündt; Wm. James

Physical

Cultural

Primatology Study of primates

Anthropometry Measurement of human

physical characteristicsOsteology Study of

bone

Ethnology Emphasizes CULTURE

Ethnography Emphasizes culture

Human Genetics Biological inheritance

Social Anthropology Similar to Sociology

Linguistics Study of Language

Forensic Anthropology Applications to Law

Archeology Interested in the Past