Science and Social Anthropology: Resolving Hierarchical and Horizontal Knowledge Structures

Abstract

The relationship between social anthropology and the so-called ‘natural’ sciences has a long and fraught history, beginning with the field’s inception in the 1870s. Despite periodic attempts at thematic reinvention, social anthropology consequently remains trapped in what has been termed a ‘pre-paradigmatic’ state, without consensus among social anthropologists on either a self-consistent object of study for their field, parameters of study, or a causal model for explaining that object. Pedagogic sociology offers a causal explanation for this lack of integration, by describing how formal education systems define and segregate ‘natural’ and ‘social’ sciences, and by further describing a mecha..