The Development of Conceptual Framework in Physiological Anthropology

Abstract

From an international viewpoint, the physiological anthropology had always developed in a mosaic-like structure until the end of the nineteen-sixties. Some of the pieces of the mosaic then started to create significant elements of the theoretical concepts of this science. Generally speaking, research in physiological anthropology consists of the process of individual biology and the process of population biology. Through using these processes, physiological anthropologists have come to realize the importance of individual thinking and the inadequacy of essentialistic concept such as the ideal man, and now infer that all populations are polytypic. Physiological anthropologists have refined the conceptual framework of their science and composed a set of keywords characterizing it. These are technological adaptability, environmental adaptability, functional potentiality, whole body coordination, and physiological polytypism. These keywords are mutually interdependent and do not form any orthogonal relations.