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In biological anthropology, there is a fair bit more science. However, in cultural anthropology, its methods are purely qualitative. You can't make a hypothesi

In biological anthropology, there is a fair bit more science. However, in cultural anthropology, its methods are purely qualitative. You can't make a hypothesis, breed 100 people and have them interact for a lifetime with your variable (with another 100 for control) to prove a hypothesis. The questions that cultural anthropologists are asking cannot ethically be answered with science because there are too many variables to separate out a dependent and independent variable. It's the difference between running a/b testing and going out and talking with your customers. Going out to talk with your customers is essentially applied anthropology - the methods are the same. (source: my husband is a cultural anthropologist and I've been in countless conversations regarding Anthropology and science.)

toasterlovin 7y ago
> However, in cultural anthropology, its methods are purely qualitative. You can't make a hypothesis, breed 100 people and have them interact for a lifetime with your variable (with another 100 for control) to prove a hypothesis. You can't evaluate any hypothesis, but you can evaluate a lot of using natural experiments: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_experiment.
barry-cotter 7y ago
Having purely qualitative variables does not render science impossible, it just means you’re dealing with probabilistic inference, so you need more data points or a more powerful theory. Macroeconomics has a relatively tiny data set, only one world and ~200 economies with at most 2,000 years of data and they know plenty, scientifically. Either anthropologists are making theories about the world which are in principle testable, in which case they’re doing science, though it can’t possibly measure up to the standards of proof of physics or they’re just story telling.
- ebiester 7y ago
  Consider this argument: "political secularism is the modern state's sovereign power to reorganize substantive features of religious life, stipulating what religion is or ought to be, assigning its proper content, and disseminating concomitant subjectivities, ethical frameworks, and quotidian practices." -Saba Mahmood So, that's a lot of jargon, but let's simplify it. As Americans, we all understand secularism as "the separation of church and state." However, Mahmood is saying that doesn't quite cover it. We can look at different countries that all call themselves secular and that there are interesting interrelations with religion. Instead, she argued, that secularism is the government saying where religion can (and cannot) interact with the public sphere. (This is super simplified, mind you.) Well, that's a testable hypothesis, but how? Well, Mahmood had an original question: when she was doing fieldwork with Coptic Christians in Egypt, she was wondering why it was not cast in terms of minority rights. In Egypt; Nasser, Sadat, and Mubarak all were proponents of secularism yet questions of Copts and Muslims were considered attacks to nationalist unity. Well, is that a violation of the purity of secularism, or is it that secularism isn't quite what it seemed? We can look at Turkey and secularism as well - They are secular under the French consideration of Laïcité (Laiklik in Turkish) and yet they had a ministry in the government that certified Imams and provided for the upkeep of the mosques. So they're not Secularist. But then, what of France, which may be considered one of the most strict adherents. but even then, schools follow the Christian liturgical year, including breaks for Christmas and Easter. Yet the government owns most old church buildings in France and pays for its maintenance, and there are clear governmental preferences of Christianity over Islam. And how about the United states, where it opens with a prayer, most often by a Christian? So, then, we have a lot of data, but it is data that is talking about the definition of a word. Who cares about a definition? Well, that definition tells us a lot about the cultures of the US, France, Turkey, and Egypt (among others - see India) but it's not exactly a testable hypothesis. It's closer to what a philosopher does than a Sociologist. ____ But even then, what if it was "just story telling?" Anthropologists have helped to elucidate cultures not our own and referencing what makes them common and different. I argue that that is inherently valuable.
natalyarostova 7y ago
> The questions that cultural anthropologists are asking cannot ethically be answered with science because there are too many variables to separate out a dependent and independent variable. This only holds if you have a really strict and useless definition of science. If I told you I had hardware and simulation software, and you fed it in a lot of historical information, and it then simulated the results that best fit with its best attempt to cross-validate it against more recent and better known events, we might reasonably say "yeah that sounds like a scientific approach, we are using different sets of data, even though lots of it is imperfect, to make inference by exploiting common human processes across time" But if I tell you that piece of hardware is the human brain, for some reason people change their view, it becomes 'qualitative' and 'non-scientific.' Which only really holds if you have a mystical view of the human brain which puts it in its own class as distinct from any other piece of computational machinery used in scientific inference.
ummonk 7y ago
Inability to make controlled experiments certainly makes science harder but you can still test scientific hypotheses. Cosmology and astrophysics are very much sciences.

toasterlovin 7y ago

> However, in cultural anthropology, its methods are purely qualitative. You can't make a hypothesis, breed 100 people and have them interact for a lifetime with your variable (with another 100 for control) to prove a hypothesis. You can't evaluate any hypothesis, but you can evaluate a lot of using natural experiments: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_experiment.

barry-cotter 7y ago

Having purely qualitative variables does not render science impossible, it just means you’re dealing with probabilistic inference, so you need more data points or a more powerful theory. Macroeconomics has a relatively tiny data set, only one world and ~200 economies with at most 2,000 years of data and they know plenty, scientifically. Either anthropologists are making theories about the world which are in principle testable, in which case they’re doing science, though it can’t possibly measure up to the standards of proof of physics or they’re just story telling.

ebiester 7y ago
Consider this argument: "political secularism is the modern state's sovereign power to reorganize substantive features of religious life, stipulating what religion is or ought to be, assigning its proper content, and disseminating concomitant subjectivities, ethical frameworks, and quotidian practices." -Saba Mahmood So, that's a lot of jargon, but let's simplify it. As Americans, we all understand secularism as "the separation of church and state." However, Mahmood is saying that doesn't quite cover it. We can look at different countries that all call themselves secular and that there are interesting interrelations with religion. Instead, she argued, that secularism is the government saying where religion can (and cannot) interact with the public sphere. (This is super simplified, mind you.) Well, that's a testable hypothesis, but how? Well, Mahmood had an original question: when she was doing fieldwork with Coptic Christians in Egypt, she was wondering why it was not cast in terms of minority rights. In Egypt; Nasser, Sadat, and Mubarak all were proponents of secularism yet questions of Copts and Muslims were considered attacks to nationalist unity. Well, is that a violation of the purity of secularism, or is it that secularism isn't quite what it seemed? We can look at Turkey and secularism as well - They are secular under the French consideration of Laïcité (Laiklik in Turkish) and yet they had a ministry in the government that certified Imams and provided for the upkeep of the mosques. So they're not Secularist. But then, what of France, which may be considered one of the most strict adherents. but even then, schools follow the Christian liturgical year, including breaks for Christmas and Easter. Yet the government owns most old church buildings in France and pays for its maintenance, and there are clear governmental preferences of Christianity over Islam. And how about the United states, where it opens with a prayer, most often by a Christian? So, then, we have a lot of data, but it is data that is talking about the definition of a word. Who cares about a definition? Well, that definition tells us a lot about the cultures of the US, France, Turkey, and Egypt (among others - see India) but it's not exactly a testable hypothesis. It's closer to what a philosopher does than a Sociologist. ____ But even then, what if it was "just story telling?" Anthropologists have helped to elucidate cultures not our own and referencing what makes them common and different. I argue that that is inherently valuable.

natalyarostova 7y ago

> The questions that cultural anthropologists are asking cannot ethically be answered with science because there are too many variables to separate out a dependent and independent variable. This only holds if you have a really strict and useless definition of science. If I told you I had hardware and simulation software, and you fed it in a lot of historical information, and it then simulated the results that best fit with its best attempt to cross-validate it against more recent and better known events, we might reasonably say "yeah that sounds like a scientific approach, we are using different sets of data, even though lots of it is imperfect, to make inference by exploiting common human processes across time" But if I tell you that piece of hardware is the human brain, for some reason people change their view, it becomes 'qualitative' and 'non-scientific.' Which only really holds if you have a mystical view of the human brain which puts it in its own class as distinct from any other piece of computational machinery used in scientific inference.

ummonk 7y ago

Inability to make controlled experiments certainly makes science harder but you can still test scientific hypotheses. Cosmology and astrophysics are very much sciences.