Cladogram of extinct apes
Paul Jones
the paleocene up to the end of the miocene. Does anyone know of a good,
balanced site on the web that summarises recent research and fossil
finds, preferably one with some nice piccies?
Thanks.
Take care,
Paul
John Harshman
Paul Jones wrote:
If you work your way up this tree you will find something of the sort. I
don't know how good it is, or how well it fits the recent literature,
but it does give references. (I didn't find the bird parts of the tree
to be very good, but some of them were changed based on my advice, so he
does maintain the site.)
http://www.fmnh.helsinki.fi/users/haaramo/Index_tree.htm#Chordata
r norman
I think that is far too broad to answer the question.
Try, instead, googling on "hominidae evolution" or even "catarrhini
evolution". This will at least generally limit you to the groups you
want. It sound, though, like you might want fossil apes that are not
directly on the human branch.
Paul Jones
> If you work your way up this tree you will find something of the sort. I
> don't know how good it is, or how well it fits the recent literature,
> but it does give references. (I didn't find the bird parts of the tree
> to be very good, but some of them were changed based on my advice, so he
> does maintain the site.)
>
> http://www.fmnh.helsinki.fi/users/haaramo/Index_tree.htm#Chordata
Thanks, John. Interesting site. I was more looking for a site that
concentrated on extinct apes with rather more text.
Take care,
Paul
John Harshman
r norman wrote:
> On Wed, 2 Jun 2004 18:42:55 +0000 (UTC), John Harshman
> <jharshman....@pacbell.net> wrote:
>
>
>>
>>Paul Jones wrote:
>>
>>
>>>I'm quite interested to read about attempts to analyse ape ancestry from
>>>the paleocene up to the end of the miocene. Does anyone know of a good,
>>>balanced site on the web that summarises recent research and fossil
>>>finds, preferably one with some nice piccies?
>>>
>>
>>If you work your way up this tree you will find something of the sort. I
>>don't know how good it is, or how well it fits the recent literature,
>>but it does give references. (I didn't find the bird parts of the tree
>>to be very good, but some of them were changed based on my advice, so he
>>does maintain the site.)
>>
>>http://www.fmnh.helsinki.fi/users/haaramo/Index_tree.htm#Chordata
>>
>
> I think that is far too broad to answer the question.
No, it has a quite detailed tree of hominid evolution. You just have to
move through a few more pages to get there.
> Try, instead, googling on "hominidae evolution" or even "catarrhini
> evolution". This will at least generally limit you to the groups you
> want. It sound, though, like you might want fossil apes that are not
> directly on the human branch.
Are there any fossil apes that *are* directly on the human branch? How
would you tell?
r norman
<jharshman....@pacbell.net> wrote:
>
>
>r norman wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 2 Jun 2004 18:42:55 +0000 (UTC), John Harshman
>> <jharshman....@pacbell.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>
>>>Paul Jones wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>I'm quite interested to read about attempts to analyse ape ancestry from
>>>>the paleocene up to the end of the miocene. Does anyone know of a good,
>>>>balanced site on the web that summarises recent research and fossil
>>>>finds, preferably one with some nice piccies?
>>>>
>>>
>>>If you work your way up this tree you will find something of the sort. I
>>>don't know how good it is, or how well it fits the recent literature,
>>>but it does give references. (I didn't find the bird parts of the tree
>>>to be very good, but some of them were changed based on my advice, so he
>>>does maintain the site.)
>>>
>>>http://www.fmnh.helsinki.fi/users/haaramo/Index_tree.htm#Chordata
>>>
>>
>> I think that is far too broad to answer the question.
>
>
>No, it has a quite detailed tree of hominid evolution. You just have to
>move through a few more pages to get there.
Seven clicks to get to Hominoidea, one more to Hominidea, and when you
do get there, its in Finnish which I don't even think the Finns can
read!
John Harshman
r norman wrote:
Are you trying to wrest the curmudgeon title from Larry Moran? I count
exactly three Finnish words (if you want to call them words) on that
page. And here, save a few clicks (mind the wrap):
mel turner
Not exactly what you want, but the following is most of the
[paleo]anthropology section of a not-too-selective file
of likely URLs I've come across and saved. Several will be
worth looking at & some give other refs and links:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional/part2a.html#primate
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/
http://www.handprint.com/LS/ANC/evol.html
http://www.asu.edu/clas/iho/science.htm
http://www.anthro.ucdavis.edu/faculty/mchenry/miocene.htm
http://www.lions.odu.edu/~kkilburn/203_lectures/evo16.pdf
http://wwww.dur.ac.uk/t.c.rae/CT/folia_rae.pdf
http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev.anthro.29.1.147?cookieSet=1
http://faculty.uca.edu/~benw/biol4415/lecture10c/
http://www.anthro.ucdavis.edu/courses/su02/ant1/Reader.pdf
http://www.d.umn.edu/cla/faculty/troufs/anth1602/pcprimpr.html
http://biology.fullerton.edu/biol409/ch/ch17.html
www.lions.odu.edu/~kkilburn/203_lectures/evo16.pdf
http://assets.cambridge.org/0521571243/sample/0521571243WSC00.PDF
http://www.cmnh.org/kadabba/temporarybackgrounder.htm
http://members.aol.com/darwinpage/hominid.htm
http://www.origins.tv/darwin/hominid.htm
http://www.asa3.org/archive/evolution/199901/0038.html
<http://hyper.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/full/40/3/355?maxtoshow=&HITS=60&hits=60&RESULTFORMAT=&searchid=1078489156142_4626&
stored_search=&FIRSTINDEX=5535&search_url=http%3A%2F%2Fcirc.ahajournals.org%2Fcgi%2Fsearch>
http://www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/humanorigins/aop/aop_start.html
http://www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/humanorigins/faq/Encarta/encarta.htm
http://www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/humanorigins/ha/a_tree.html
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Atrium/1381/index.html
http://becominghuman.org/
http://www.primate.wisc.edu/pin/taxon.html
http://sapphire.indstate.edu/~ramanank/
http://www.cruzio.com/~cscp/index.htm
http://www.wsu.edu:8001/vwsu/gened/learn-modules/top_longfor/timeline/timeline.html
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/mammal/eutheria/primates.html
http://www.emory.edu/LIVING_LINKS/Taxonomy.html
http://www.emory.edu/LIVING_LINKS/
http://tolweb.org/tree?group=Hominidae&contgroup=Catarrhini
http://tolweb.org/tree?group=Catarrhini&contgroup=Primates
http://tolweb.org/tree?group=Primates&contgroup=Eutheria
http://www.skarstein.no/frode/phyl.html
http://www.idsnews.com/news/110498/opinion/110498line.html
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=96hprk%24a2j%241%40news.duke.edu
http://www.umanitoba.ca/anthropology/courses/121/taxonomy.html
http://www.humboldt.edu/~mrc1/main.shtml
http://users.hol.gr/~dilos/prehis.htm
http://www.indiana.edu/~origins/links/evolinks.html
http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/biology/humanevolution/
http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/biology/humanevolution/humevol.html
http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/biology/humanevolution/fosrec.html
http://cgi.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/tryit/evolution/
cheers
Paul Jones
Thanks!
Take care,
Paul
Aron-Ra
news:40BE1FBB...@pacbell.net...
This site is nicely-detailed, (about the best available on the web) but its
not peer-reviewed, and I've found it to be rife with errors on most of the
pages. For instance, in this case, Oreopithecus bomboli appears in two
different clades, and one of them isn't even on a hominid line.
I know that you'll probably live up to your name, (and reputation) by
ripping me apart on this, but here is one I put together myself to try and
clean up the errors I was able to find. I don't know how accurate it is,
but I think it must be better than the Finnish cladogram.
http://home.comcast.net/~aronra/Anthropoidea.htm
You may fire when ready.
I was going to have my anthropology professor review this for me, but much
to my dismay, we never even touched on taxonomy in that class. At the end
of the semester, I showed him this again, and said that he should include
systematics in upcoming courses. But he just laughed and said he would have
to go back to school himself first.
Virtually everything he did teach us about the definitions of words like
"hominid" were at least five years out-of-date, and no lnnger used in the
same way. For example, on one of the test questions, we were to describe
how to tell the difference between humans and hominids. And no, I don't
mean "other" hominids, or "non-human" hominids. In his terminology, apes
were hominids and people were humans.
John Harshman
Aron-Ra wrote:
> "John Harshman" <jharshman....@pacbell.net> wrote in message
> news:40BE1FBB...@pacbell.net...
>
>>
>>Paul Jones wrote:
>>
>>
>>>I'm quite interested to read about attempts to analyse ape ancestry from
>>>the paleocene up to the end of the miocene. Does anyone know of a good,
>>>balanced site on the web that summarises recent research and fossil
>>>finds, preferably one with some nice piccies?
>>>
>>
>>If you work your way up this tree you will find something of the sort. I
>>don't know how good it is, or how well it fits the recent literature,
>>but it does give references. (I didn't find the bird parts of the tree
>>to be very good, but some of them were changed based on my advice, so he
>>does maintain the site.)
>>
>>http://www.fmnh.helsinki.fi/users/haaramo/Index_tree.htm#Chordata
>>
>
> This site is nicely-detailed, (about the best available on the web) but its
> not peer-reviewed, and I've found it to be rife with errors on most of the
> pages. For instance, in this case, Oreopithecus bomboli appears in two
> different clades, and one of them isn't even on a hominid line.
I don't think those are errors, per se. They are attempts to give
alternative placements, and each of them is supported by some reference
or other. If he's to be faulted, it's on bad choices of references.
Which is certainly the case for birds.
> I know that you'll probably live up to your name, (and reputation)
As far as I know, I have no such reputation. But I could be wrong.
> by
> ripping me apart on this, but here is one I put together myself to try and
> clean up the errors I was able to find. I don't know how accurate it is,
> but I think it must be better than the Finnish cladogram.
> http://home.comcast.net/~aronra/Anthropoidea.htm
>
> You may fire when ready.
I have no objections. Of course, I don't pay much attention to primate
paleontology either.
> I was going to have my anthropology professor review this for me, but much
> to my dismay, we never even touched on taxonomy in that class. At the end
> of the semester, I showed him this again, and said that he should include
> systematics in upcoming courses. But he just laughed and said he would have
> to go back to school himself first.
Good idea?
> Virtually everything he did teach us about the definitions of words like
> "hominid" were at least five years out-of-date, and no lnnger used in the
> same way. For example, on one of the test questions, we were to describe
> how to tell the difference between humans and hominids. And no, I don't
> mean "other" hominids, or "non-human" hominids. In his terminology, apes
> were hominids and people were humans.
As far as I know, "human" has never had a technical definition, so I
would have no idea how to answer the question regardless of the state of
the teacher's knowledge. And I don't think is was *ever* correct to say
that humans are not hominids. That's not outdated, it's just plain wrong.
Aron-Ra
>
>
> Aron-Ra wrote:
>
> > "John Harshman" <jharshman....@pacbell.net> wrote in message
> > news:40BE1FBB...@pacbell.net...
> >
> would have no idea how to answer the question regardless of the state of
> the teacher's knowledge. And I don't think is was *ever* correct to say
> that humans are not hominids. That's not outdated, it's just plain wrong.
My mistake. The actual question was to explain the differences between apes
and hominids, and by "apes" he meant extant "Great apes". He was still
including gorillas and chimpanzees with Pongo, and was a bit confused when I
told him that I couldn't answer the question as phrased, because all the
great apes were now considered hominids, including Pongids.
John Harshman
Aron-Ra wrote:
> "John Harshman" <jharshman....@pacbell.net> wrote in message
> news:40C08112...@pacbell.net...
>
>>
>>Aron-Ra wrote:
>>
>>
>>>"John Harshman" <jharshman....@pacbell.net> wrote in message
>>>news:40BE1FBB...@pacbell.net...
>>>
>>>
>>As far as I know, "human" has never had a technical definition, so I
>>would have no idea how to answer the question regardless of the state of
>>the teacher's knowledge. And I don't think is was *ever* correct to say
>>that humans are not hominids. That's not outdated, it's just plain wrong.
>>
>
> My mistake. The actual question was to explain the differences between apes
> and hominids, and by "apes" he meant extant "Great apes". He was still
> including gorillas and chimpanzees with Pongo, and was a bit confused when I
> told him that I couldn't answer the question as phrased, because all the
> great apes were now considered hominids, including Pongids.
Probably a cultural anthropologist. I took an anthropology course during
my undergraduate career too, and the teacher, a cultural anthropologist
for sure, was extremely confused about hominid paleontology. I'm sure
she was much better informed about Melanesian kinship systems, or whatever.
Mujin
I expect so also, especially if his graduate work was completed during
the 90s or before the mid 60s - many cultural anthropologists of my
acquaintance are distressingly ignorant of the biology of humans.
What's even more distressing is the apparently total ignorance of the
philosophy of science and concepts of scientific method; the worst
thing that ever happened to anthropology (esp but not limited to
social and cultural anthro) was the post-modernist "revolution" of the
90s. The idea that the observer is part of the scene being observed
and can have an impact on both the event and the account of the event
is important, but many people took the concept too far. I still
rankle when I think of the arguments I've had with people over whether
or not it's possible to know things about other people...
This attitude among many of the younger anthropologists seems to have
led to a general disdain for the use of science in anthropology. "The
very idea!" they cry, and proceed to degenerate into ill thought out
extrapolations from Foucault and nihilistic ideas regarding the nature
of knowledge.
Prior to the brief courtship with science in the 60s and 70s, cultural
anthropology was enamoured of linguistic approaches to culture, and
treated a lot of social phenomena in a very abstract manner. The
actors in such phenomena weren't really important, all that was
important was the phenomena themselves and the way they fit together
into a sort of jigsaw puzzle.
Another possibility is that the professor in question was actually an
archaeologist. Many anthropology departments in NA combine cultural,
physical and archaeological anthropology. Physical anthro units are
often taught by archaeologists, most of whom normally deal with much
more recent things than australopithecenes and so have little need to
keep up with that dimension of the literature. Actually,
paleoanthropologists are very few and far between, and many of them
work out of geology departments along with other paleontologists.
--
K
Tomorrow is a new day.
English Proverb
John Wilkins
This is an excellent summary of the state of anthropology and a good
many other sciences, as I read it.
My own take is that cultural anthropology is functionalist in its
explanations, while physical anthropology is etiological,
oversimplifying...
--
John S Wilkins PhD - www.wilkins.id.au
a little emptier, a little spent
as always by that quiver in the self,
subjugated, yes, and obedient. -- Seamus Heaney
Mujin
All I can say is I'm glad I'm not the only one who sees it this way.
Also [1]
>
>My own take is that cultural anthropology is functionalist in its
>explanations, while physical anthropology is etiological,
>oversimplifying...
Yes, I'm afraid that's a terrible overgeneralization, but what else
can we expect from a philosopher? ;-)
Seriously though, I think you've summarised part of the problem quite
nicely, provided we limit physical anthropology to population biology,
deme distribution geography and the like - the biology stuff.
Cultural anthro is faced with studying the foundations of human social
behaviour using a method that is by nature historical and
non-repeatable. One thing the post-modernist revolution did for
anthropology was to bring to the fore the risks in using humans as the
subjects, the scientists *and* the instruments in fieldwork. However,
some people fell into the nihilistic trap of post-modernism and went
too far with the idea of taking the observer into account - the result
was effectively a rejection of the idea that ethnography can provide
data at all.
The 80s and 90s were a time of upheaval in cultural studies of all
kinds because of post-modernism, and in fact there's a tradition of a
"methodological crisis" in cultural anthropology happening at about
that time. Certainly, there was a point to the upheaval - but at the
same time as the idea of ethnography as a viable "experimental" method
was being deconstructed no one seemed to have a problem with the work
of people like Evans-Pritchard, Malinowski [2], Boaz, etc.
<personal aside>
For myself, I think that by drawing on the basic concepts of
ethnography put forward by Malinowski and developed by his students
over the next two or three decades and combining this with the
"quantum" concepts of post-modernism (presence of the observer) I can
generate viable methods of ethnological data gathering for my current
project. I'm particularly interested in Malinowski's legacy because
he drew heavily on the positivism coming out of the late 19th and
early 20th centuries and I think the intellectual rigour he was aiming
for is sadly missing from the work of many, many cultural
anthropologists. So deeply mired in nihilistic hyperpostmodernism are
some researchers that I often struggle through whole paragraphs of
word salad only to find there was no semantic content... </aside>
I think that in many ways the difficulty arises from the extremely
volatile social climate in the US. No doubt the same sort of problem
has an impact elsewhere, but realistically most academics publishing
in anthropology these days seem to be based in the US. I think the
root of the problem is a hypersensitivity to political correctness,
which makes people shy away from treating the study of humans in
certain ways. Cultural anthropologists are either a little afraid of
treating humans as real entities for fear of offending someone (thus
focussing on broad generalisations - structuralism and functionalism)
or afraid of treating humans as anything but perfectly unique
individuals (thus avoiding any generalisation at all for fear it might
be construed as stereotyping - "new" literary ethnographic techniques
etc)
Physical anthro has suffered equally, but the difference of course is
that cultural phenomena are by necessity studied almost as though they
arose ex nihilo so they *need* to be studied in terms of functionalism
and structuralism, whereas physical anthropology has the advantage of
being able to draw heavily on biology and aim at an etiological
science.
[1] Dr.Wilkins thinks anthropology is a real science! Woo hoo! <g>
[2] My spell checker desperately wants me to replace Malinowski with
either Mackinaws or malingering. I'm torn.
--
K
Why is it that so many people think that it is better to have belief
in God as your only virtue than disbelief as your only vice?
Aron-Ra
"Mujin" <ba...@hornedking.com> wrote in message
news:pnq3c0ts1p9al1kul...@4ax.com...
> On Sat, 5 Jun 2004 13:49:57 +0000 (UTC), John Harshman
> <jharshman....@pacbell.net> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> >Aron-Ra wrote:
> >
> >> "John Harshman" <jharshman....@pacbell.net> wrote in message
> >> news:40C08112...@pacbell.net...
> >>
> >>>
> >>>Aron-Ra wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>"John Harshman" <jharshman....@pacbell.net> wrote in message
> >>>>news:40BE1FBB...@pacbell.net...
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>As far as I know, "human" has never had a technical definition, so I
> >>>would have no idea how to answer the question regardless of the state
of
> >>>the teacher's knowledge. And I don't think is was *ever* correct to say
> >>>that humans are not hominids. That's not outdated, it's just plain
wrong.
> >>>
> >>
> >> My mistake. The actual question was to explain the differences between
apes
> >> and hominids, and by "apes" he meant extant "Great apes". He was still
> >> including gorillas and chimpanzees with Pongo, and was a bit confused
when I
> >> told him that I couldn't answer the question as phrased, because all
the
> >> great apes were now considered hominids, including Pongids.
> >
> >
> >Probably a cultural anthropologist.
(snip)
> especially if his graduate work was completed during
> the 90s or before the mid 60s
Before the mid-1960s.
>- many cultural anthropologists of my
> acquaintance are distressingly ignorant of the biology of humans.
I have a good friend who is a cultural anthropologist in Tuscon. She
doesn't know dick about human phylogeny either, doesn't want to, and
criticizes physical anthropologists for their "attitudes" about such things.
>- many cultural anthropologists of my
> acquaintance are distressingly ignorant of the biology of humans.
(snip)
> Another possibility is that the professor in question was actually an
> archaeologist.
Wow. Very good guesses! He is a cultural anthropologist, but he says he is
primarily an archaeologist.
Mujin
Oh! One of *those*!
<g> I have an advantage in that in real life I'm surrounded by the
deadbeats described above! One day I'll finish this damn thesis and
then they'll be sorry. Laugh at *me* in the academy will they?
--
K
Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny. Free men pull
in all kinds of directions.
--Terry Pratchett
John Wilkins
Are you saying all philosophers overgeneralise? If so, does that make
you a philosopher? ;-)
>
> Seriously though, I think you've summarised part of the problem quite
> nicely, provided we limit physical anthropology to population biology,
> deme distribution geography and the like - the biology stuff.
Yeah, hence the note about oversimplification. One cannot merely do a
functionalist account and avoid all questions of etiology.
>
> Cultural anthro is faced with studying the foundations of human social
> behaviour using a method that is by nature historical and
> non-repeatable. One thing the post-modernist revolution did for
> anthropology was to bring to the fore the risks in using humans as the
> subjects, the scientists *and* the instruments in fieldwork. However,
> some people fell into the nihilistic trap of post-modernism and went
> too far with the idea of taking the observer into account - the result
> was effectively a rejection of the idea that ethnography can provide
> data at all.
Or ethology :-)
I sometimes think this is the age in which we fell in love with the
Observer...
>
> The 80s and 90s were a time of upheaval in cultural studies of all
> kinds because of post-modernism, and in fact there's a tradition of a
> "methodological crisis" in cultural anthropology happening at about
> that time. Certainly, there was a point to the upheaval - but at the
> same time as the idea of ethnography as a viable "experimental" method
> was being deconstructed no one seemed to have a problem with the work
> of people like Evans-Pritchard, Malinowski [2], Boaz, etc.
>
> <personal aside>
> For myself, I think that by drawing on the basic concepts of
> ethnography put forward by Malinowski and developed by his students
> over the next two or three decades and combining this with the
> "quantum" concepts of post-modernism (presence of the observer) I can
> generate viable methods of ethnological data gathering for my current
> project. I'm particularly interested in Malinowski's legacy because
> he drew heavily on the positivism coming out of the late 19th and
> early 20th centuries and I think the intellectual rigour he was aiming
> for is sadly missing from the work of many, many cultural
> anthropologists. So deeply mired in nihilistic hyperpostmodernism are
> some researchers that I often struggle through whole paragraphs of
> word salad only to find there was no semantic content... </aside>
This is a general issue in social science, I think. At some point they
stopped trying to be sciences altogether. Sure positivism was somewhat
malign, but they did at least attempt to be objective in their
approaches to data and experiment.
The incursion of the observer into science was necessary, but the
pendulum swung so far that later generations forgot that the reason for
doing social science in the first place was to investigate the ways
things really were. It didn't help that we seemed to have to adopt the
posture (or imposture) that there was no human nature, and all was
socially determined. That is incoherent.
>
> I think that in many ways the difficulty arises from the extremely
> volatile social climate in the US. No doubt the same sort of problem
> has an impact elsewhere, but realistically most academics publishing
> in anthropology these days seem to be based in the US. I think the
> root of the problem is a hypersensitivity to political correctness,
> which makes people shy away from treating the study of humans in
> certain ways. Cultural anthropologists are either a little afraid of
> treating humans as real entities for fear of offending someone (thus
> focussing on broad generalisations - structuralism and functionalism)
> or afraid of treating humans as anything but perfectly unique
> individuals (thus avoiding any generalisation at all for fear it might
> be construed as stereotyping - "new" literary ethnographic techniques
> etc)
>
> Physical anthro has suffered equally, but the difference of course is
> that cultural phenomena are by necessity studied almost as though they
> arose ex nihilo so they *need* to be studied in terms of functionalism
> and structuralism, whereas physical anthropology has the advantage of
> being able to draw heavily on biology and aim at an etiological
> science.
*And* it can't avoid real, physical data. If you are just doing
attitudinal surveys, you can create data by developing the categories
you most desire in your questionnaires. Cultural anthro, along with
pretty well all other social science, seems to me to be fundamentally a
measurement of how well the researcher's prejudices and ideas can be
imposed on the subjects researched.
>
> [1] Dr.Wilkins thinks anthropology is a real science! Woo hoo! <g>
Don't get too enthusiastic or I'll be forced to figure out a critique of
that, too, and bring Colin Groves down upon my head. I don't want that,
OK?
>
> [2] My spell checker desperately wants me to replace Malinowski with
> either Mackinaws or malingering. I'm torn.
> --
> K
>
> Why is it that so many people think that it is better to have belief
> in God as your only virtue than disbelief as your only vice?
Mujin
Wilkins) wrote:
Aren't we all, at some level? I certainly am after a few drinks...<g>
>> Seriously though, I think you've summarised part of the problem quite
>> nicely, provided we limit physical anthropology to population biology,
>> deme distribution geography and the like - the biology stuff.
>
>Yeah, hence the note about oversimplification. One cannot merely do a
>functionalist account and avoid all questions of etiology.
I would suggest you read more widely in modern cultural anthropology,
but I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy - I have read articles
which appeared to be attempting to do just this. You're right though,
in most cases etiology is unavoidable at some level.
>> Cultural anthro is faced with studying the foundations of human social
>> behaviour using a method that is by nature historical and
>> non-repeatable. One thing the post-modernist revolution did for
>> anthropology was to bring to the fore the risks in using humans as the
>> subjects, the scientists *and* the instruments in fieldwork. However,
>> some people fell into the nihilistic trap of post-modernism and went
>> too far with the idea of taking the observer into account - the result
>> was effectively a rejection of the idea that ethnography can provide
>> data at all.
>
>Or ethology :-)
I often wonder what the dividing line is between ethnography and
ethology. Generalisations about human behaviour at all in
anthropology runs the risk of being labelled racist (even if the race
being generalised about is Homo sapiens), but at some point there are
global patterns which would be useful to identify; likewise, when
studying the ethology of any primate there comes a point where one is
studying behaviours specific to a troop, which may or not be present
in the wider population.
>
>I sometimes think this is the age in which we fell in love with the
>Observer...
Only sometimes?
>>
>> The 80s and 90s were a time of upheaval in cultural studies of all
>> kinds because of post-modernism, and in fact there's a tradition of a
>> "methodological crisis" in cultural anthropology happening at about
>> that time. Certainly, there was a point to the upheaval - but at the
>> same time as the idea of ethnography as a viable "experimental" method
>> was being deconstructed no one seemed to have a problem with the work
>> of people like Evans-Pritchard, Malinowski [2], Boaz, etc.
>>
>> <personal aside>
>> For myself, I think that by drawing on the basic concepts of
>> ethnography put forward by Malinowski and developed by his students
>> over the next two or three decades and combining this with the
>> "quantum" concepts of post-modernism (presence of the observer) I can
>> generate viable methods of ethnological data gathering for my current
>> project. I'm particularly interested in Malinowski's legacy because
>> he drew heavily on the positivism coming out of the late 19th and
>> early 20th centuries and I think the intellectual rigour he was aiming
>> for is sadly missing from the work of many, many cultural
>> anthropologists. So deeply mired in nihilistic hyperpostmodernism are
>> some researchers that I often struggle through whole paragraphs of
>> word salad only to find there was no semantic content... </aside>
>
>This is a general issue in social science, I think. At some point they
>stopped trying to be sciences altogether. Sure positivism was somewhat
>malign, but they did at least attempt to be objective in their
>approaches to data and experiment.
Positivism was malign, I think, only in the way it was applied in the
social sciences - in particular the Us/Them dichotomy which arose from
attempts at formalisation. At the same time, however, I think that
the reasoned approach to ethnographical research formulated by
Malinowski didn't in itself lead to the "malign" results. His
approach was rudimentary, drawn heavily from his previous studies of
Nietzsche and Mach and his application of the ideas he drew from them
to the work of Frazer. Primarily, it would seem that Malinowski
brought to the fore the idea that culture - as a set of ideas - has an
interface with the concrete world, and as such was susceptible to
study, i.e. that it was possible to know concrete things about
cultures by studying them.
What postmodernism and "the incursion of the observer" brought to the
social sciences was the realisation (which Malinowski had already had
in some ways, if one reads his introduction to Argonauts of the
Western Pacific carefully) that the observer is inextricably involved
when he or she begins to observe human behaviour. This is a valuable
addition to the disciplines, but there is a danger:
>The incursion of the observer into science was necessary, but the
>pendulum swung so far that later generations forgot that the reason for
>doing social science in the first place was to investigate the ways
>things really were. It didn't help that we seemed to have to adopt the
>posture (or imposture) that there was no human nature, and all was
>socially determined. That is incoherent.
And here it is. My current project involves the social epidemiology
of STDs, particularly with regards to ideas of sexuality and
perception of risk. Naturally, the study of human sexuality is a
touchy area with all sorts of special research difficulties of its
very own - I'm in the preliminary research stages right now, in
preparation for submitting an actual research proposal, and as such am
reading as widely as possible on the subject of research methods. No
matter where I look, modern literature denies the influence of
instinct or any remotely biological element on human sexual behaviour
and instead relies on scripting, which is invariably defined as being
entirely culturally/socially derived. As you say, this is incoherent:
how can such a fundamental aspect of human biology have *no*
non-cultural component? The current theoretical landscape in the
social sciences seems to insist on either/or - there seems to be no
middle ground where human behaviour can be explained by a combination
of biological and cultural factors.
>>
>> I think that in many ways the difficulty arises from the extremely
>> volatile social climate in the US. No doubt the same sort of problem
>> has an impact elsewhere, but realistically most academics publishing
>> in anthropology these days seem to be based in the US. I think the
>> root of the problem is a hypersensitivity to political correctness,
>> which makes people shy away from treating the study of humans in
>> certain ways. Cultural anthropologists are either a little afraid of
>> treating humans as real entities for fear of offending someone (thus
>> focussing on broad generalisations - structuralism and functionalism)
>> or afraid of treating humans as anything but perfectly unique
>> individuals (thus avoiding any generalisation at all for fear it might
>> be construed as stereotyping - "new" literary ethnographic techniques
>> etc)
>>
>> Physical anthro has suffered equally, but the difference of course is
>> that cultural phenomena are by necessity studied almost as though they
>> arose ex nihilo so they *need* to be studied in terms of functionalism
>> and structuralism, whereas physical anthropology has the advantage of
>> being able to draw heavily on biology and aim at an etiological
>> science.
>
>*And* it can't avoid real, physical data.
A definite advantage.
>If you are just doing
>attitudinal surveys, you can create data by developing the categories
>you most desire in your questionnaires.
This is the challenge I'm facing at the moment. To some degree, my
research will be impossible to do without using questionnaires, but I
need to find or develop some way to minimise my influence on the
results.
>Cultural anthro, along with
>pretty well all other social science, seems to me to be fundamentally a
>measurement of how well the researcher's prejudices and ideas can be
>imposed on the subjects researched.
But of course this is the objection post-modernism brought to the
social sciences; the problem is that post-modernists in the social
sciences typically deny that it is possible to eliminate this effect.
Many cultural anthropologists insist that "repatriation" of
ethnography and other research methods is really a matter of realising
that what the researcher has to say about the subject of his
ethnography tells the reader more about the researcher than about the
subject. As such, they claim, the key is to use one's perceptions of
the Other as a mirror by which to examine one's own culture.
Self-critique is certainly valuable, but surely this process threatens
to go in exactly the direction people like Said were complaining about
in the first place! If we reject the idea that we *can* know real
things about others, and that ethnography etc is really about us
anyway, then representations of other cultures in ethnography will
naturally drift toward caricature and stereotype. After all, the
ethnography is really just a mythology intended to emphasise what is
good or bad in us, right?
>>
>> [1] Dr.Wilkins thinks anthropology is a real science! Woo hoo! <g>
>
>Don't get too enthusiastic or I'll be forced to figure out a critique of
>that, too, and bring Colin Groves down upon my head. I don't want that,
>OK?
C'mon, surely it wouldn't be *that* bad? <g>
--
K
"It is only the man whose intellect is clouded by his sexual
impulses that could give the name of "the fair sex" to that
undersized, narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped and short-legged
race." - Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
John Wilkins
> On Sun, 6 Jun 2004 20:43:01 +0000 (UTC), john...@wilkins.id.au (John
> Wilkins) wrote:
>
> >Mujin <ba...@hornedking.com> wrote:
> >
> >> On Sun, 6 Jun 2004 02:31:32 +0000 (UTC), john...@wilkins.id.au (John
> >> Wilkins) wrote:
> >>
...
> >> >My own take is that cultural anthropology is functionalist in its
> >> >explanations, while physical anthropology is etiological,
> >> >oversimplifying...
> >>
> >> Yes, I'm afraid that's a terrible overgeneralization, but what else
> >> can we expect from a philosopher? ;-)
> >
> >Are you saying all philosophers overgeneralise? If so, does that make
> >you a philosopher? ;-)
>
> Aren't we all, at some level? I certainly am after a few drinks...<g>
It is explained in the Symposium that only philosophers should drink.
Others merely get drunk, but drunk philosophers philosophise. Or so I am
told. I can't quite find the exact passage. Maybe it was the Laws...
>
> >> Seriously though, I think you've summarised part of the problem quite
> >> nicely, provided we limit physical anthropology to population biology,
> >> deme distribution geography and the like - the biology stuff.
> >
> >Yeah, hence the note about oversimplification. One cannot merely do a
> >functionalist account and avoid all questions of etiology.
>
> I would suggest you read more widely in modern cultural anthropology,
> but I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy - I have read articles
> which appeared to be attempting to do just this. You're right though,
> in most cases etiology is unavoidable at some level.
I perhaps should have said that you can't do it *successfully*. In all
the social science pieces I have read, very few actually attempt to deal
with etiology. Those that do appeal to some progressionistic account;
history moves, it is assumed, from primitive to complex and sohisticated
(Comte). Or it moves in cycles (Toynbee/Kuhn). Nobody but a few
enlightened Darwinians note that history is neither staged nor cyclical,
or that progress can reverse.
>
> >> Cultural anthro is faced with studying the foundations of human social
> >> behaviour using a method that is by nature historical and
> >> non-repeatable. One thing the post-modernist revolution did for
> >> anthropology was to bring to the fore the risks in using humans as the
> >> subjects, the scientists *and* the instruments in fieldwork. However,
> >> some people fell into the nihilistic trap of post-modernism and went
> >> too far with the idea of taking the observer into account - the result
> >> was effectively a rejection of the idea that ethnography can provide
> >> data at all.
> >
> >Or ethology :-)
>
> I often wonder what the dividing line is between ethnography and
> ethology. Generalisations about human behaviour at all in
> anthropology runs the risk of being labelled racist (even if the race
> being generalised about is Homo sapiens), but at some point there are
> global patterns which would be useful to identify; likewise, when
> studying the ethology of any primate there comes a point where one is
> studying behaviours specific to a troop, which may or not be present
> in the wider population.
The recent work on human universals, summarised usefully at the end of
Pinker's _Blank Slate_, suggests that this is starting to atrophy. There
is a gap between "geographical or tribal variants" and "race" that
social science needs to overcome. For sure there are geographical forms
such as you find typically in the San or the Han or the Ik. These are
expected if humans are biological organisms subject to the same
evolutionary and genetic processes as other organisms. But "race" is
founded on very crude distinctions made by European-centrists around
1800, and so it is a *social* categorial system.
We have been so careful to avoid race we have overlooked varation. And
we have been soo scared of determinism we have denied the obvious
biological species-wide features of humans. And it is neurology that is
beginning to defeat that article of faith.
>
> >
> >I sometimes think this is the age in which we fell in love with the
> >Observer...
>
> Only sometimes?
There are times I think we fell in love with not thinking at all...
Well, this had been a tendency from the 1600 onwards, really...
Have a look at "Grounded Theory" methods used in social epidemiology and
health research. They still need to be used carefully (there is no
absolute objectivity in social research no matter how hard you apply
methods) but at least they *try* to eliminate observer bias. The idea is
that you do a series of iteratively refined questionaires, each time
allowing the responses to guide the choices of questions in the next
version. At some point you rule it off and do the actual study, in the
hope that your categories reflect the active issues in the subject
culture.
I proposed this as a way to do research on the attitudes of scientists
back in 1998. Nobody took it up, of course...
Becker, P.H.: 1993, 'Common Pitfalls in Published Grounded Theory
Research', Qualitative Health Research 32
Glaser, B.G.: 1978, Theoretical Sensitivity, Sociology Press
Strauss, A.L.: 1987, Qualitative Analysis for Social Scientists,
Cambridge University Press
are the refs I encountered back when.
>
> >Cultural anthro, along with
> >pretty well all other social science, seems to me to be fundamentally a
> >measurement of how well the researcher's prejudices and ideas can be
> >imposed on the subjects researched.
>
> But of course this is the objection post-modernism brought to the
> social sciences; the problem is that post-modernists in the social
> sciences typically deny that it is possible to eliminate this effect.
> Many cultural anthropologists insist that "repatriation" of
> ethnography and other research methods is really a matter of realising
> that what the researcher has to say about the subject of his
> ethnography tells the reader more about the researcher than about the
> subject. As such, they claim, the key is to use one's perceptions of
> the Other as a mirror by which to examine one's own culture.
>
> Self-critique is certainly valuable, but surely this process threatens
> to go in exactly the direction people like Said were complaining about
> in the first place! If we reject the idea that we *can* know real
> things about others, and that ethnography etc is really about us
> anyway, then representations of other cultures in ethnography will
> naturally drift toward caricature and stereotype. After all, the
> ethnography is really just a mythology intended to emphasise what is
> good or bad in us, right?
Oddly, there is this bracketing or exclusion of *this* social researcher
from this self-referential problem each time some work is published.
Apparently all attempts to understand things in other cultures fail
except the one currently under discussion. Remarkable, really...
>
> >>
> >> [1] Dr.Wilkins thinks anthropology is a real science! Woo hoo! <g>
> >
> >Don't get too enthusiastic or I'll be forced to figure out a critique of
> >that, too, and bring Colin Groves down upon my head. I don't want that,
> >OK?
>
> C'mon, surely it wouldn't be *that* bad? <g>
It's the extra work that would cause. I'd have to cherry pick through
references in order to obfuscate the fact that I really don't know what
I'm talking about. I hate that...
> --
> K
>
> "It is only the man whose intellect is clouded by his sexual
> impulses that could give the name of "the fair sex" to that
> undersized, narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped and short-legged
> race." - Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
What did he have against women jockeys anyway?
Mujin
Wilkins) wrote:
The "Great Chain of Being" has been a bugbear of social studies of all
kinds for a long time. It's about time we shrugged it off. Part of
the problem, I think, is that because the subject of inquiry is humans
it's that much more difficult to avoid thinking that we hold a
privileged place in the cosmos.
>Nobody but a few
>enlightened Darwinians note that history is neither staged nor cyclical,
>or that progress can reverse.
Perhaps it's the word progress which causes difficulty? Something for
me to think about.
>>
>> >> Cultural anthro is faced with studying the foundations of human social
>> >> behaviour using a method that is by nature historical and
>> >> non-repeatable. One thing the post-modernist revolution did for
>> >> anthropology was to bring to the fore the risks in using humans as the
>> >> subjects, the scientists *and* the instruments in fieldwork. However,
>> >> some people fell into the nihilistic trap of post-modernism and went
>> >> too far with the idea of taking the observer into account - the result
>> >> was effectively a rejection of the idea that ethnography can provide
>> >> data at all.
>> >
>> >Or ethology :-)
>>
>> I often wonder what the dividing line is between ethnography and
>> ethology. Generalisations about human behaviour at all in
>> anthropology runs the risk of being labelled racist (even if the race
>> being generalised about is Homo sapiens), but at some point there are
>> global patterns which would be useful to identify; likewise, when
>> studying the ethology of any primate there comes a point where one is
>> studying behaviours specific to a troop, which may or not be present
>> in the wider population.
>
>The recent work on human universals, summarised usefully at the end of
>Pinker's _Blank Slate_, suggests that this is starting to atrophy.
I've been starting to move into more sociology reading (to my
advisor's disgust) and Blank Slate is on my list of things to read in
the near future. How near will depend on a number of factors,
including whether or not I get very far with the Witgenstein you
"assigned" me last time <g>
>There
>is a gap between "geographical or tribal variants" and "race" that
>social science needs to overcome. For sure there are geographical forms
>such as you find typically in the San or the Han or the Ik. These are
>expected if humans are biological organisms subject to the same
>evolutionary and genetic processes as other organisms. But "race" is
>founded on very crude distinctions made by European-centrists around
>1800, and so it is a *social* categorial system.
>
>We have been so careful to avoid race we have overlooked varation. And
>we have been soo scared of determinism we have denied the obvious
>biological species-wide features of humans. And it is neurology that is
>beginning to defeat that article of faith.
The pendulum seems to be swinging in the other direction, as you say
Pinker notes in Blank Slate, and study of humans as real biological
entities is starting to be a little more acceptable. More concrete
evidence of genetically homogenous communities from medicine and other
"respectable" disciplines may speed the process somewhat.
>>
>> >
>> >I sometimes think this is the age in which we fell in love with the
>> >Observer...
>>
>> Only sometimes?
>
>There are times I think we fell in love with not thinking at all...
Isn't that the truth.
Um...I got lost. Which one? The idea "that it was possible to know
concrete things about cultures by studying them"? My reading thus far
suggests that social sciences, such as they were, were predominantly
descriptive in nature until the late 19th century. In looking at the
above, I think I may have expressed myself unclearly - it's not so
much a matter of knowing specific things about specific cultures
(which obviously is descriptive) but being able to make inferences
about the nature of a culture by application of theory to the details
known. I used the word concrete improperly, which might have
suggested a different meaning.
On my list, but perhaps I'll move it up the list. I'm working on a
couple of books on research in sexuality recommended to me by my
advisor (who isn't a medical anthropologist per se) and am having a
little trouble with them. They don't seem to be focussed in the
direction I want to go.
>They still need to be used carefully (there is no
>absolute objectivity in social research no matter how hard you apply
>methods) but at least they *try* to eliminate observer bias. The idea is
>that you do a series of iteratively refined questionaires, each time
>allowing the responses to guide the choices of questions in the next
>version. At some point you rule it off and do the actual study, in the
>hope that your categories reflect the active issues in the subject
>culture.
Hmm. Interesting. Definitely a must read for me. Questionnaires are
likely to be a critical part of my research, combined with a sort of
ethnographic/interview kind of data gathering.
>I proposed this as a way to do research on the attitudes of scientists
>back in 1998. Nobody took it up, of course...
Naturally. Sounds like a good method for such a study to me, though.
Thanks for that. Hopefully the local Uni has them in the stacks.
Yeah, but all those other people aren't *real* social researchers, so
they don't know how to eliminate bias...
>>
>> >>
>> >> [1] Dr.Wilkins thinks anthropology is a real science! Woo hoo! <g>
>> >
>> >Don't get too enthusiastic or I'll be forced to figure out a critique of
>> >that, too, and bring Colin Groves down upon my head. I don't want that,
>> >OK?
>>
>> C'mon, surely it wouldn't be *that* bad? <g>
>
>It's the extra work that would cause. I'd have to cherry pick through
>references in order to obfuscate the fact that I really don't know what
>I'm talking about. I hate that...
A shame, since it would probably put you on the same footing as many
modern anthropologists...
>> --
>> K
>>
>> "It is only the man whose intellect is clouded by his sexual
>> impulses that could give the name of "the fair sex" to that
>> undersized, narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped and short-legged
>> race." - Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
>
>What did he have against women jockeys anyway?
I always presumed he was a somewhat "socially challenged" gent who
never met any women other than the ones with good personalities his
mother introduced. A combination of poor experiences and sour grapes
will do that to a fellow.
--
K
Kill not the goose that lays the golden eggs.
English Proverb
John Wilkins
> On Mon, 7 Jun 2004 00:17:18 +0000 (UTC), john...@wilkins.id.au (John
> Wilkins) wrote:
>
> >Mujin <ba...@hornedking.com> wrote:
> >
> >> On Sun, 6 Jun 2004 20:43:01 +0000 (UTC), john...@wilkins.id.au (John
> >> Wilkins) wrote:
> >>
> >> >Mujin <ba...@hornedking.com> wrote:
> >> >
> >> >> On Sun, 6 Jun 2004 02:31:32 +0000 (UTC), john...@wilkins.id.au (John
> >> >> Wilkins) wrote:
> >> >>
...
> >> >Yeah, hence the note about oversimplification. One cannot merely do a
> >> >functionalist account and avoid all questions of etiology.
> >>
> >> I would suggest you read more widely in modern cultural anthropology,
> >> but I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy - I have read articles
> >> which appeared to be attempting to do just this. You're right though,
> >> in most cases etiology is unavoidable at some level.
> >
> >I perhaps should have said that you can't do it *successfully*. In all
> >the social science pieces I have read, very few actually attempt to deal
> >with etiology. Those that do appeal to some progressionistic account;
> >history moves, it is assumed, from primitive to complex and sohisticated
> >(Comte). Or it moves in cycles (Toynbee/Kuhn).
>
> The "Great Chain of Being" has been a bugbear of social studies of all
> kinds for a long time. It's about time we shrugged it off. Part of
> the problem, I think, is that because the subject of inquiry is humans
> it's that much more difficult to avoid thinking that we hold a
> privileged place in the cosmos.
I think this is part and parcel of a complex of ideas that constrain us
- including the macrocosm/microcosm parallel (what happens in our heads
must reflect what is happening in the wider world, and vice versa); the
intentionality fallacy (if I can use intentional words to describe it,
then it must be intentional or goal directed), the narrative fallacy
(events tell stories); logicism (the idea that logic is an eternal
fact), the scalar notion of complexity (scala naturae), the principle of
plenitude (that anything that can be will be, in this best of all
possible worlds), the principle of continuua (that all change is gradual
and consistent), the principle of progress (every day, in every way,
things are getting better and better; the Frank Spencer principle for
those who get the ref); and the - as I call it - zenith principle (that
where I stand is the highest possible vantage point).
This is what I call the Greek View.
In exchange I would seek the Pandora's Box principle (any novelty brings
unexpected results), the Not Invented Here principle (most ideas are
distributed, not invented), the Sparse Population principle (few options
are ever explored), the Cart Following the Horse principle (events tend
to lead, and culture tends to follow), the One Damned Thing After
Another principle (that events do not tell stories; people do, closely
allied to), and the Universal Indifference Principle (there are no
morals in history or biology or astronomy).
This is what I call the Corrected View. I'm quite sure I could come up
with others...
>
> >Nobody but a few
> >enlightened Darwinians note that history is neither staged nor cyclical,
> >or that progress can reverse.
>
> Perhaps it's the word progress which causes difficulty? Something for
> me to think about.
I much prefer "change"...
Leave Ludwig for now. Read Pinker, then read his sources.
...
My mistake. I meant that we could know something about the *cultures*
rather than about ourselves - an attitude that begins in the late 1600s.
Prior to that it was all "barbarian" this and "savage" that... :-)
...
> >> Self-critique is certainly valuable, but surely this process threatens
> >> to go in exactly the direction people like Said were complaining about
> >> in the first place! If we reject the idea that we *can* know real
> >> things about others, and that ethnography etc is really about us
> >> anyway, then representations of other cultures in ethnography will
> >> naturally drift toward caricature and stereotype. After all, the
> >> ethnography is really just a mythology intended to emphasise what is
> >> good or bad in us, right?
> >
> >Oddly, there is this bracketing or exclusion of *this* social researcher
> >from this self-referential problem each time some work is published.
> >Apparently all attempts to understand things in other cultures fail
> >except the one currently under discussion. Remarkable, really...
>
> Yeah, but all those other people aren't *real* social researchers, so
> they don't know how to eliminate bias...
This I think of as the Marx Effect. Don't know quite why...
>
> >>
> >> >>
> >> >> [1] Dr.Wilkins thinks anthropology is a real science! Woo hoo! <g>
> >> >
> >> >Don't get too enthusiastic or I'll be forced to figure out a critique of
> >> >that, too, and bring Colin Groves down upon my head. I don't want that,
> >> >OK?
> >>
> >> C'mon, surely it wouldn't be *that* bad? <g>
> >
> >It's the extra work that would cause. I'd have to cherry pick through
> >references in order to obfuscate the fact that I really don't know what
> >I'm talking about. I hate that...
>
> A shame, since it would probably put you on the same footing as many
> modern anthropologists...
Tsk. I have grander ambitions than *that*. I want to be a
*philosophical* charlatan, thanks all the same.
Mujin
Wilkins) wrote:
Some mothers do 'ave em...<g> the images that conjures! Painfully
accurate in some cases.
>; and the - as I call it - zenith principle (that
>where I stand is the highest possible vantage point).
>
>This is what I call the Greek View.
The basic concept inherent in items of "the Greek View" seems to be
the concept of an inherent order;
>
>In exchange I would seek the Pandora's Box principle (any novelty brings
>unexpected results), the Not Invented Here principle (most ideas are
>distributed, not invented), the Sparse Population principle (few options
>are ever explored), the Cart Following the Horse principle (events tend
>to lead, and culture tends to follow), the One Damned Thing After
>Another principle (that events do not tell stories; people do, closely
>allied to), and the Universal Indifference Principle (there are no
>morals in history or biology or astronomy).
>
>This is what I call the Corrected View. I'm quite sure I could come up
>with others...
and "the Corrected View" includes items of an unordered nature - in
some cases there *is* order, but it's incidental to the subject of
study.
Is this a fair summary of the two "Views"?
>>
>> >Nobody but a few
>> >enlightened Darwinians note that history is neither staged nor cyclical,
>> >or that progress can reverse.
>>
>> Perhaps it's the word progress which causes difficulty? Something for
>> me to think about.
>
>I much prefer "change"...
I prefer change too. The word progress has unfortunate implications
which can mislead anyone studying culture (or biology of course).
This is inconvenient, since - just as in biology - it's not really
possible for cultures to backtrack along their history. Certainly,
structures and ideas can be lost, and the culture/society can revert
to a less complex state, but the situation won't be the same as
before. The same is true when the culture moves back toward a higher
state of complexity - if you've already been there the odds of
arriving at that exact spot again are very poor. I liken this to the
multiple times wings were developed and lost in the .... mantis
lineage wasn't it? I'll have to look that up.
A guy's got to have recreational reading too you know! <g> Seriously
though, you're right. I've been hoping to be in a position to present
a solid proposal by September, but haven't been making much progress.
I think the Pinker suggestion plus the references you suggested last
post will help me get on the right track. There's remarkably little
specific material in the library for me to go on; I definitely need to
cast my nets wider.
[snip]
>> >Oddly, there is this bracketing or exclusion of *this* social researcher
>> >from this self-referential problem each time some work is published.
>> >Apparently all attempts to understand things in other cultures fail
>> >except the one currently under discussion. Remarkable, really...
>>
>> Yeah, but all those other people aren't *real* social researchers, so
>> they don't know how to eliminate bias...
>
>This I think of as the Marx Effect. Don't know quite why...
LOL
>>
>> >>
>> >> >>
>> >> >> [1] Dr.Wilkins thinks anthropology is a real science! Woo hoo! <g>
>> >> >
>> >> >Don't get too enthusiastic or I'll be forced to figure out a critique of
>> >> >that, too, and bring Colin Groves down upon my head. I don't want that,
>> >> >OK?
>> >>
>> >> C'mon, surely it wouldn't be *that* bad? <g>
>> >
>> >It's the extra work that would cause. I'd have to cherry pick through
>> >references in order to obfuscate the fact that I really don't know what
>> >I'm talking about. I hate that...
>>
>> A shame, since it would probably put you on the same footing as many
>> modern anthropologists...
>
>Tsk. I have grander ambitions than *that*. I want to be a
>*philosophical* charlatan, thanks all the same.
Also, you've already got a good start on that while you'd have to do
the groundwork for being an anthropological charlatan from scratch.
--
K
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
-Abraham Lincoln
John Wilkins
> On Mon, 7 Jun 2004 06:11:41 +0000 (UTC), john...@wilkins.id.au (John
> Wilkins) wrote:
>
> >Mujin <ba...@hornedking.com> wrote:
> >
...
> >> The "Great Chain of Being" has been a bugbear of social studies of all
> >> kinds for a long time. It's about time we shrugged it off. Part of
> >> the problem, I think, is that because the subject of inquiry is humans
> >> it's that much more difficult to avoid thinking that we hold a
> >> privileged place in the cosmos.
> >
> >I think this is part and parcel of a complex of ideas that constrain us
> >- including the macrocosm/microcosm parallel (what happens in our heads
> >must reflect what is happening in the wider world, and vice versa); the
> >intentionality fallacy (if I can use intentional words to describe it,
> >then it must be intentional or goal directed), the narrative fallacy
> >(events tell stories); logicism (the idea that logic is an eternal
> >fact), the scalar notion of complexity (scala naturae), the principle of
> >plenitude (that anything that can be will be, in this best of all
> >possible worlds), the principle of continuua (that all change is gradual
> >and consistent), the principle of progress (every day, in every way,
> >things are getting better and better; the Frank Spencer principle for
> >those who get the ref)
>
> Some mothers do 'ave em...<g> the images that conjures! Painfully
> accurate in some cases.
>
> >; and the - as I call it - zenith principle (that
> >where I stand is the highest possible vantage point).
> >
> >This is what I call the Greek View.
>
> The basic concept inherent in items of "the Greek View" seems to be
> the concept of an inherent order;
It's a good deal more than order. It's continuity, teleology, scalar
reality, and the mistake of thinking that we are somehow in tune with
the real world (leading to idealism and other fallacies).
>
> >
> >In exchange I would seek the Pandora's Box principle (any novelty brings
> >unexpected results), the Not Invented Here principle (most ideas are
> >distributed, not invented), the Sparse Population principle (few options
> >are ever explored), the Cart Following the Horse principle (events tend
> >to lead, and culture tends to follow), the One Damned Thing After
> >Another principle (that events do not tell stories; people do, closely
> >allied to), and the Universal Indifference Principle (there are no
> >morals in history or biology or astronomy).
> >
> >This is what I call the Corrected View. I'm quite sure I could come up
> >with others...
>
> and "the Corrected View" includes items of an unordered nature - in
> some cases there *is* order, but it's incidental to the subject of
> study.
It's more that we have to work to know the order we see. The Greek view
was that we already had it in mind. The Corrected View is that - as
Huxley put it - Nature whispers "yes", but shouts "NO!"
>
> Is this a fair summary of the two "Views"?
>
> >>
> >> >Nobody but a few
> >> >enlightened Darwinians note that history is neither staged nor cyclical,
> >> >or that progress can reverse.
> >>
> >> Perhaps it's the word progress which causes difficulty? Something for
> >> me to think about.
> >
> >I much prefer "change"...
>
> I prefer change too. The word progress has unfortunate implications
> which can mislead anyone studying culture (or biology of course).
> This is inconvenient, since - just as in biology - it's not really
> possible for cultures to backtrack along their history. Certainly,
> structures and ideas can be lost, and the culture/society can revert
> to a less complex state, but the situation won't be the same as
> before. The same is true when the culture moves back toward a higher
> state of complexity - if you've already been there the odds of
> arriving at that exact spot again are very poor. I liken this to the
> multiple times wings were developed and lost in the .... mantis
> lineage wasn't it? I'll have to look that up.
I think that historical change is a process of occupying sparsely a
region of attainable states. We may be using the same playing cards, but
each time a hand is dealt, it is almost certainly unique. However, we
also end up maintaining achieved states if they happen to be more
workable for one reason or another; in short we establish traditions.
A tradition, for me, is the cultural equivalent of a kin group, and a
bundle of traditions form a cultural species (guess why I got interested
in what biological species were?).
So we occupy some few coordinates in an evolving "meme space" of
possible ideas.
...
Mujin
Wilkins) wrote:
Thanks for the clarification - sounds like I had the right idea but
didn't take it far enough.
Interesting - I've toyed with the idea of "cultural species" myself,
but I found the intense permeability of cultures to be problematic so
I discarded that line of thought in favour of other approaches.
>So we occupy some few coordinates in an evolving "meme space" of
>possible ideas.
>...
--
K
"A long and wicked life followed by five minutes of perfect grace gets you into Heaven. An equally long life of decent living and good works followed by one outburst of taking the name of the Lord in vain then have a heart attack at that moment and be damned for eternity. Is that the system?"
-Robert A. Heinlein