There is no scientific anthropology here, for anthropology is not a science, no matter how much its young practitioners wish it to be. You can feed apples into a computer until the cows come home, but all you will get out of it is applesauce. I am defiantly an "eyeball anthropologist," a man with what might be called extensive knowledge in this sad age of rampant ignorance, with an insatiable curiosity and a visceral need to know the whys of human behavior, and the propensity to form a theory out of any two pieces of data. Watch out for that. I will not lead you down a straight Yellow Brick Road, but off into the poppy fields to look at his or that apparent irrelevancy, which will lead to another irrelevancy - but we will get to the Emerald City at last.
- John Greenway, Down Among the Wild Men
2 comments:
This is why I always did so well in Anthropology(half of the term is "apology" after all!)--ended up Majoring in it(I had to major in SOMETHING to eventually escape college incarceration....), as I did so poorly in the "real" sciences. I am an emperor of anecdotes(if I do say so myself), and Anthropology is the "science" of anecdotes!!!.....L.B.
....and, I might add, I've always felt a "career" in Anthropology is a Western Eurocentric excuse to "go native" and still be accepted(somewhat) in one's own overly civilized birth culture....L. B.
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