Word: anthropologist
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...discuss what was unknown in their fields. The co-editors quickly discovered that "the more eminent they were, the more ready to run to us with their ignorance." Some of the contributors are indeed eminent: Molecular Biologists Francis Crick and Sir John Kendrew. Chemist Linus Pauling (all Nobel laureates), Anthropologist Donald Johanson, Astronomers Sir Hermann Bondi and Thomas Gold, Physicist John Wheeler. The conundrums they pose are also notable. How did the universe come into being? Why do we sleep? How are galaxies formed? What is consciousness? Why does a species become extinct? The problem that the experts had simply...
...book. The Langurs of Abu, Harvard Anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, 31, portrays langur life as a "soap opera" that revolves around the struggle between the sexes. As in other species, the strongest males compete for control of each troop. What makes the langurs different is that the winner tries to bite to death the young offspring of his predecessor. The mothers resist the infanticide until the struggle looks hopeless, then pragmatically present themselves to the new ruler for copulation...
...usually the least reliable observers of curious customs and events. They interpret them and, "to lend weight and conviction to their interpretations, they cannot help altering history a little," he said. This observation, made in 16th century France, applies all too well to the most recent work of cultural anthropologist Marvin Harris, Cannibals and Kings. This exposition of how the varieties of cultural behavior can be explained as adaptations to ecological conditions is unquestionably the product of an exceedingly clever brain...
...half. The book does not provide a step into understanding the destiny of our culture. It does add a wealth of fascinating material to the debate on the origins of culture but even then, Harris ignores so much. The concept of cultural lag, for example, proposed by the anthropologist W. F. Ogburn, describing the same endemic recurrence of survival crises that Harris focuses on, sees the differing rates of change (of different elements of society) as the chief disruptors of the relationships between old structures of behavior and technology...
...throughout, one should remember that 16th century warning about relying on the clever for unbiased information. Certainly, Cannibals and Kings is entertaining and unburdened by the gobbledygook much recent writing on sociology is infamous for. Its chief fault is its glibness. Levi-Strauss, discussing the theories of geographer-turned-anthropologist Boas, wrote: "Social experiences and those constant interactions between the group and the individual cannot be inferred; they must be observed...