ADMELIORA - ANTHROPOLOGY

Anthropology and Science presents examples of living and dynamic epistemology's and practices, and of how scientific ways of knowing operate in the world.

The word anthropology comes from the Greek anthropoids ("human") and logia ("study"),it is the study of humankind, from its beginnings millions of years ago to the present day.

Are you as interested as I am in knowing how, when, and where human life arose, what the first human societies and languages were like, why cultures have evolved along diverse but often remarkably convergent pathways, why distinctions of rank came into being, and how small bands and villages gave way to chiefdoms and chiefdoms to mighty states and empires?

Anthropology seeks to uncover principles of behavior that apply to all human communities. To an anthropologist, diversity itself ,seen in body shapes and sizes, customs, clothing, speech, religion, and worldview , provides a frame of reference for understanding any single aspect of life in any given community.

Anthropology's four main subfields — socio-cultural, biological, archeology, and linguistic anthropology.

Cultural anthropology, applies the comparative method and evolutionary perspective to human culture. Culture represents the entire database of knowledge, values, and traditional ways of viewing the world, which have been transmitted from one generation to the next, non-genetically, apart from DNA through words, concepts, and symbols. See our everyday surroundings with a sense of wonder and discovery.One aspect of culture: language, is the hallmark of the human species.

Linguistic anthropologists, representing one of the discipline's traditional branches, look at the history, evolution, and internal structure of human languages.

Archaeologists interpret this often fragmentary but fascinating record to reassemble long-ago cultures and forgotten ways of life.

Biological (or physical) anthropology looks at Homo sapiens as a genus and species, tracing their biological origins, evolutionary development, and genetic diversity.

What does it mean to be human? While the question may never be fully answered, the study of anthropology will surely uncover the diversity of human beings world wide.

Clifford Geertz stated that anthropologists have been the first to insist on a number of things: that the world does not divide into the pious and the superstitious; that there are sculptures in jungles and paintings in deserts; that political order is possible without centralized power and principled justice without codified rules; that the norms of reason were not fixed in Greece, the evolution of morality not consummated in England. Most important, we were the first to insist that we see the lives of others through lenses of our own grinding and that they look back on ours through ones of their own.

Please read some of my papers on various topics, use the link provided .

I hope you will find them informative and interesting.