Evolutionary Anthropology: The Anthropology of Science

Science as a Humanities

There's been a quiet revolution in humanities, situating science within human thought and activity.
Commonplace ideas in humanities about science are often unacknowledged or seen as threatening by scientists.
Need for a broader perspective to facilitate communication, teaching, and acceptance of science, where anthropology should be central.

The Two Cultures

C.P. Snow reflected on the divide between intellectuals in sciences and humanities.
Snow described intellectual communities as cultures in an anthropological sense.
The study of science has become an active area of research and scholarship.
The study of science does not fall within the general academic canon of “science.”
It incorporates history, philosophy, sociology, cultural studies, psychology, and anthropology.
The scholarly study of science is itself situated outside the sciences.

Division within Academics

The division within academics still exists and has possibly grown.
The study of science might be unfamiliar to scientists themselves.
The study of science is occasionally perceived as intrinsically hostile.
Interest in fraud by observers of science could suggest science is fundamentally corrupt.
Critical analysis of science by philosophers, historians, and social scientists is grouped together with creationism, animal liberation, Afro-centrism, and other anti-intellectual movements.
A scientist published a manuscript in a humanities journal under false pretenses as a hoax which provoked gloating on the part of scientists.

Science Under Siege

Paranoid reaction may be understandable where science is perceived as being under siege.
It is more productive to consider carefully what the stakes are, what the issues are, and what the sides are.
Science is not under organized attack from the humanities, but there are some unarticulated intellectual extravagances of the scientific community.
These include assumptions about the value-neutrality of scientific claims, the independence of scientific statements from the cultural biases of the scientist making them, and the crucial distinction between the many statements that are scientific and the relatively few that are actually true.
Distinguishing science from scientism is not necessarily in the best interest of scientists
A supporter of the Human Genome Project can be on record that “our fate is in our genes,” as if genetics were high-tech astrology.
It is certainly in a geneticist’s interests (especially funding interests) to have listeners think that their fates lie in what the geneticist studies.
People, including scientists, can generally be counted on to act in their perceived interests.

Genetic Determinism

Distinguishing science from scientism is of considerable importance in the modern world.
Genetic determinism of crime, if it is true, may imply a social agenda.
Every generation this idea seems to be proposed and refuted.
History may be of greater assistance in analyzing such claims than science is.

Truth in Science

If our fate is not actually in our genes at all, then scientists should probably not utter such dubious statements in its name.
If science is to be understood as an anthology of truths about the universe, then it is untruths clothed as science that undermine science, not the people who point them out.
All societies believe that their explanations for things constitute the truth.
It is exceedingly difficult to convince them otherwise and, in fact, it is somewhat impolite even to try.
One might reasonably expect that an insufficiently sensitive attempt to impose scientific thought on nonscientists might be perceived as hostile or threatening.
Science attempts to map itself onto reality, and succeeds in the long run.
The most obvious implication of its dominant falsificationist methodology is that most scientific ideas turn out to be false, but are no less scientific for it.
Only a relative few are retained, by the fundamental processes through which science operates, and even these are constantly modified.
This undermines the gross equation of “scientific” and “true.”

Cultural Perspectives

There is a basic conflict between what people in a society think they are doing and what they appear to an outsider actually to be doing.
Members of a culture see themselves, their beliefs, and behaviors one way; people with a different language, different frames of references, and different traditions of thought see them another way.
There may be several ways of interpreting the same set of activities or beliefs, but it is an axiom of ethnography that a cultural system cannot be fully comprehended without stepping outside of it.

How Science Sees Itself

Scientists collect data and test hypotheses to formulate explanations about how the universe works.
That is an incomplete description of the process of science, for it takes the scientist for granted; it is an analysis of a social process that ignores both the actor and the context.
When an hypothesis is falsified, its advocates rarely call it quits and go into the dry-goods business.
If one’s life, education, and work are bound up in a particular idea, one may not be willing to give it up quite so easily.
It may be easier to disregard the test as having been inadequate, rather that the idea as having been falsified.
Purely abstract rational judgments, therefore, may be superseded by other considerations;
Data rarely if ever “speak for themselves,” and serve very little function except in the service of a theoretical issue; theories are not determined by data, they are under-determined by data.

Theoretical Vacuum

Experiments and observations are neither made nor analyzed in a theoretical vacuum.
They are interpretable only within a set of ideas; sometimes they exist only within a set of ideas; and they are often interpreted differently by other scientists with different sets of ideas.
Since contrasting analytical frameworks are often available, the presentation of data involves some form of advocacy, explaining why the data were collected and what they are adduced to demonstrate.
There are two components to a scientific advance (as there are to any element of culture change).
One is an individual component, an idea or experimental result; the other is a social component, the dissemination of that work, support for it, and its ultimate adoption or rejection by the community at large.
A particularly valuable demonstration of this disjunction has recently been given for the polymerase chain reaction in molecular genetics.
If science were a simple march forward to the truth, there would be no need to make ths distinction, for all good ideas would promptly be recognized and accepted, and all bad ideas would not.
Sometimes wrong ideas are widely accepted and right ideas are not.
These temporary derailments of the truth train reveal aspects of the workings of science that are independent of the workings of nature.

DNA vs Protein

In molecular genetics, it was shown elegantly in 1944 that the hereditary material most likely is DNA, not protein.
Yet the community of interest failed to accept this conclusion until a different set of experiments, no more elegant, were published in 1952.
This eight-year lag has been attributed in large part to the forceful opposition of biochemist A.E. Mirsky to the idea of DNA as the hereditary material.
Science takes place in a social matrix of power, position, and influence.
To ignore that is to miss many of the interesting questions in its history and development, and to misrepresent how contemporary science works.
Aside from the obvious clout wielded by powerful individuals in the community to shape scientific opinion, there are also ideological considerations of a more general nature that intervene between a good idea and its acceptance.

Gregor Mendel

Gregor Mendel’s ideas, for example, published in the 1860s, failed to take adequate account of what contemporary scientists saw as the intimate relationship between heredity and development, which would not be conceptually divorced for several decades.
Mendel’s work examined heredity without development, and consequently made little sense.
By the turn of the century, in the context of a clear distinction between germ and soma (i.e., reproductive and bodily tissue), Mendel’s work could be understood, precipitating its rediscovery and appreciation.

Scientific Facts

There can thus never really be ideas “ahead of their time,” whether they be Dart’s promotion of an isolated child’s Austvalopithecus skull as a “missing link” or Wegener’s promotion of continental drift in the absence of a mechanism for it.
Scientific facts are contingent facts.
They are specific to a time, place, technology, ideology, and working conditions.
General relativity theory and the chromosome theory of inheritance could not have been developed in ancient Rome.
Were an Einstein or a Morgan time-transported to ancient Rome to present them, the theories would be incomprehensible, undocumentable, and rejected.
At best they might be seen in retrospect as overlooked “ideas before their time.”

Rational Explanations

All cultures have rational explanations for things, and the scientific explanation for the same things, being bound to ideology and technology, may not be at all self-evident.
The anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski found himself unable to convince the natives of the Trobriand Islands of the relationship between sex and procreation, not so much through his own scientific incompetence, but by virtue of the cleverness of the arguments his adversaries presented, and by the power of their own (nevertheless inaccurate) explanation.
Likewise, the Micronesian who doubted the heliocentric solar system on very rational grounds:
- I am well aware of the foreigner’s claim that the earth moves and the sun stands still, as someone once told us; but this we cannot believe, for how else could it happen that in the morning and evening the sun burns less hot than in the day? It must be because the sun has been cooled when it emerges from the water, and towards setting it again approaches the water. And furthermore, how can it be possible that the sun remains still when we are yet able to observe that in the course of the year, it changes position relative to the stars

Reason, Reality, and Science

Rationality is thus not the same as empirical validity.
Science is “reality-driven,” but only in the long run.
Science is “rational,” but within limits.
So, of course are other belief systems.
Scientists of the nineteenth century saw a progression in intellectual history from magic or superstition to religion to science.
The arrogance of this position lies in the empirical fact that, unlike stone tools, superstition is still with us, and apparently as strong as ever.
Whether it is on the baseball diamond or in the molecular biology laboratory, participants in our culture (and in all cultures) harbor superstitious beliefs and carry out superstitious actions.
These fill a role for people in ordinary situations to which science is inadequate.
It is less an expression of general stupidity or intellectual backsliding than it is the consequence of an inaccurate and nonanthropological view of human behavior.
It is not that science has replaced superstition.
We hold concurrent parallel belief systems, with different functions and different effects.
People who read horoscopes do not necessarily believe that the stars determine their fates, and people who avoid mentioning a no-hitter to a pitcher in the eighth inning do not necessarily believe that their utterances can affect the outcome.
Our daily lives are filled with unscientific actions and thoughts.

Scientific Principles

The idea of people leading all aspects of their lives by scientific principles has been attractive to utopian, but in the last two centuries most attempts to implement reforms in that direction have failed.
For example, decimal time-keeping (as opposed to, for example, the 24-hour day, 60-minute hour, and 7-day week) was unsuccessful following the French Revolution’s attempt to establish a scientific society and following the Soviet Revolution’s attempt to do the same.
Conceptions of what scientific rationalities should govern modern Iives are invariably strongly culture bound.
The American geneticist Charles Davenport envisioned a scientific society in which people would “fall in love intelligently”
Not only were the eugenicists attempting to impose a cold rationalism upon a fundamentally inappropriate substrate, but their idea of scientifically intelligent mating essentially excluded any partner who was not wealthy, abstemious, and Nordic.
Davenport’s influential eugenic ideas were nevertheless temporally sandwiched between two more famous doctrines involving the advocacy of scientific rationality on the citizenry: Social Darwinism and Rassei.rhygiene.
A year after championing biology at the Scopes trial, Clarence Darrow was bashing it, condemning the “age of meddling, presumption, and gross denial of all individual feelings and emotions.. .. Amongst the schemes for remolding society [eugenics] is the most senseless and impudent that has ever been put forward by irresponsible fanatics to plague a long-suffering race.”

Hyper-rationalism

This does not mean that the imposition of scientific rationality in general life is wrong, only that one needs to consider its track record before plat-ing one’s bets.
Utopian scientific visions notwithstanding, the ridicule to which hyper-rationalism is subjected in science-fiction plots (a random episode of “Star Trek” will serve) shows the consistent theme that such hyper-rationalism represents an incomplete personality, something less-than-humanity, if not fundamentally contrary to human nature.

Science, Evolution, and World-View

A scientific explanation has the goal of empirical validity Other explanations also have that as a goal among others, but what makes modern science unique is that it is the only goal.
All cultures have origin myths to explain how people came to exist.
Evolution is the origin myth that maps on to reality most completely.
Unlike many other origin myths, it does little to affirm one’s sense of individual worth or importance, to provide codes of morality or standards of conduct, or to evoke strong emotional bonds of solidarity to a community.

Empirical Validity

If we accept science’s criterion that empirical validity is the only standard, then science’s theory wins.
The fact that many Americans are uncomfortable with the scientific origin myth directly implies that they have other criteria by which to judge it, even if scientists do not.
If one wishes to learn the scientific explanation for things, evolution is it, but there is considerable ideological baggage associated with compelling nonscientists to think as scientists.
It may be worth reflecting on the implications of denying people the other qualities that nonscientific origin myths provide.
This is not to defend creationism, with which fundamentalist Christians seek to subvert science education.
Representing creationism as science is quite simply fraudulent.
Science provides a restricted set of answers to a very large set of questions that people in all cultures have, and that science can easily be judged inadequate if we look beyond the sole criterion of empirical validity.
Science has only recently and marginally come to consider its responsibilities, and in our culture the responsibility that comes with telling people authoritatively that they are unimportant in the universe should be a large one.
It may be worth considering as a question of scientific ethics whether, without considering the ramifications, in an insecure world, science can actually be doing more harm than good to people in actively undermining their images of self-worth in a benevolent cosmos.

Teaching Science

The teaching of science as one set of ideas about the universe that follow a particular historical development and serve a particular function-in other words, a humanistic, anthropological approach to science-may be a more effective way of getting its central message across, rather than asserting science aggressively in opposition to whatever else is popularly and ignorantly believed.
Teaching how scientists think about science is a fundamentally different goal than compelling people to think as scientists do (or as they are supposed to).

The Ultimate Ethnocentrism

Science is the truest explanation of things that we have.
Scientists are experts, and the product of science-technology-works.
Scientists of every generation believe that, and their graduate students ultimately correct their mistakes.
Science is a self-correcting process.
If science were true, it stands to reason that it would not require constant correcting.
If only the minor fringes of science were being corrected, it might be supposed that the number of active scientists would dwindle as the number of problems solved increases and the number of problems remaining decreases.
There are more scientists now than have ever been.
This seems difficult to reconcile with the proposition that as science marches onward it successfully closes the doors on the problems it has addressed.

Nature

Science has provided answers to fundamental questions about nature.
The characteristic of an intellectually vigorous field is that its core concepts are in dispute or flux as, for example, “species” and “gene” are in systematic and molecular biology, respectively.
Nature may be out there, but she is often difficult to identify.
It is unwise and misleading to confuse the fact that we can teach undergraduates to memorize simple definitions for unadorned natural phenomena with the nonfact that those simple definitions are adequate and true.

Scientific Ideas

The history of science is to a large extent the discernment of the “more right” alternative out of the many “more wrong” alternatives.
That implies that at any time there are many more wrong scientific ideas out there than right ones.
If science proceeds by “conjecture and refutation” or “proposal and disposal,” and many more ideas are proposed than are disposed, it follows that most scientific ideas in existence at any time are wrong.
They will be disposed, refuted, or modified in the normal course of the fields progress.

Ethnocentric Presentation

Is it fair, then, for scientists to tell citizens of our nation, or of any nation, “You are wrong and we are right”?
This is an ideological position widely held by powerful societies in confrontation with the beliefs of less powerful societies.
It is the rawest form of ethnocentrism.
Is ethnocentrism wrong?
It is certainly an ineffective way of getting people to like you or respect you.
It is an effective way of getting people to fear and resent you.
A reasonable alternative to the ethnocentric presentation of science is to present science in an anthropological framework.
Present science not so much as the one true answer in opposition to the many false ones (which has a familiarly evangelical if intolerant appeal), but as an answer constructed within a particular cultural framework, satisfying certain criteria well (notably empirical validity) but other meaningful criteria poorly.