Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Pastimes : Kosovo -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (9876)	5/26/1999 12:31:00 AM
From: D. Long	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 17770

I think its both preservation and understanding, or rather preservation in the pursuit of understanding, when that source of understanding is quickly disappearing. There are many anthropologists that take the pure preservation stance however, linguists being many amongst them. As to how much data we need, thats a hard question. Anthropology is comparative in nature, so I think as much as we can to allow a meaningful comparison and the drawing of general conclusions. But that is my philosophy, and I should try and seperate that from any insinuation that it is "official" policy of the field. My main interest in anthropology came down to being more philosophical than truly anthropological. I feel that the field should be a means to generate general propositions about culture and the ways it shapes, and is shaped by, its members and hence its relation to an essential "human-ess." Human beings are unique animals, even among the very unique order of primates. We are a species which is all but free of the constraints of instinctual genetics, a species which first and foremost must think about its world in order to survive. Whats more, we weave a very complex and intricate tapestry of abstractions that shapes the way we percieve and react to the world, culture. I think in the study of the myriad means by which we make sense of the world, in the form and malleability of human culture, we are better able to understand who we are, and what we are. The practical application follows, all of philosophy is based on none other than these very questions, but has no inclination to consider the real dilemma of its seperating "is" from "ought." That's my take on what anthropology should be.