Actually, the main reason for the accepted definition to accompany the project was to highlight the role of the organization in the dissemination and public debate about our discipline. However, as soon as the document was published in the AAA website many / anthropological organizations as members began to protest. In newspapers, blogs, mailing lists and mail notes, scores of letters criticizing the definition of anthropology, was understood as the triumph of anthropology Interpretative AAA.
For almost five years, there is a debate that surfaces from time to time, what is anthropology: whether it is a science and belongs to the general field of positive sciences, or is part of the humanities. The scientific anthropology, say its advocates, is based on the scientific method and its conclusions are generally valid as they were reached through hypothesis testing. In particular, archeology, biological anthropology and primatology are considered part of scientific anthropology. On the other hand, those engaged in interpretive anthropology, which is based on hermeneutic philosophical tradition, come to our discipline as part of the humanities. There is also a large contingent of anthropologists and anthropologists who see anthropology as a discipline that uses both scientific and humanistic methods. Actually, it should be noted that both nomothetic methods linked to design and test hypotheses, as the hermeneutic methods linked to data interpretation work, descended from the scientific tradition of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when both forms of research were considered part of philosophy.
bitter debates over whether the perceived phenomena must be obtained through the senses and then be processed by the mind, or if necessary alert the mind to grasp the phenomena perceived from different angles, have characterized the philosophy and scientific organizations through several centuries, and the definition of science has been disputed by both approaches. One of the most famous disputes was starring Gottfried Leibniz and Isaac Newton in the sixteenth century. Leibniz thought that the principles of reason had to be established first and then be corroborated with data obtained from reality, while Newton thought he had to first look at the facts and then derive principles universal.
two important theories philosophers left us without which neither science nor the humanities, as we know now, would be possible. While Newton is remembered for important physical laws related to the severity, Leibniz is remembered for his invention of the binary system and digital encryption (literally done with the fingers), which is now on the basis of all digital technology related to computers.
Indeed, not only our discipline is constantly in this debate: We present a similar split between those engaged in the physics of the observable world, and believe that physical phenomena are independent of who is watching, and who devoted to quantum physics, and consider who notes that necessarily change the behavior of the observed.
The AAA Executive Board, of which I am currently part (2010-2013), finally issued a press release explaining that the word "science" will return all the definitions of anthropology maenjadas by the organization (see http:/ / www.aaanet.org / issues / press / AAA-Responds-to-Public-Controversy-Over-Science-in-Anthropology.cfm). The controversy, however, is hardly going to turn because, after all , anthropology was considered by those who founded and established as the most scientific of the humanities, and the most humanistic of the sciences. This, I think, shows the vitality of our discipline, because the ideas are not confronted stagnate, and the disciplines in which there are disciplines debate dead.
0 comments:
Post a Comment