Symposium on the History of Anthropology*

Abstract

SCIENCE, like organic life, has ramified by expanding into unoccupied areas and then adapting itself to the special requirements encountered there. And just as the diversified forms of animals, plants, and insects make evident by their morphology and their function the characteristics of ecological niches whose very existence might otherwise escape notice, so the diversity of techniques and concepts of scientific specialties by their very formulation reveal aspects of nature we would not have suspected. Anthropology, like other branches of science, has also embodied in its structure whole new worlds rich in insights into the development and nature of man. If we can claim for anthropology the discovery of culture through its exploration and adaptation to the world of extra-European man opened up by the age of discovery, we can say for physical anthropology that it has revealed that man is an integral part of the animal kingdom and that, in his organic aspects, he is subject to the same laws and mechanisms that control other forms of organic life. Because it is now taken for granted that this is so, it is difficult to realize how revolutionary this concept of the nature of man appeared to earlier ages. Up until the 18th century, and in many circles much later, man was still held to be sui generis and apart from all other living things. Nor was this characteristic of the Judaeo-Christian view alone. Although in Classical, particularly Greek, literature there is some evidence that man's relationship to nature was beginning to be understood, the prevailing view was much the same. As in many other civilizations, and indeed among many native people, the world of man was linked to the gods who were both extensions of man and his creators. Indeed, the attributes of man had placed him at such a distance from all other living creatures that their combination had conferred on him an almost unique position in his own mind. To have bridged the gap between man and all other animals that had been created by evolution and to have finally recognized the unity of man with organic life are, in retrospect, a towering achievement. Physical anthropology did not, like some sciences, develop from the ap-