another Tarc musing

Thoughts I hope to develop more as the year goes on...

What I like about anthropology:

It takes as its data and evidence specific instances, informal occasions, particular people and moments, and other very specific, non-‘official’ phenomena. The implication is that these sub-official phenomena are just as important and valid in the construction or experience of reality (‘the truth’) as are more ‘mundane’ or ‘traditional’ kinds of scientific data, as in those produced by scientists (natural and social) who are supported by large financial sources, honoured (a.k.a. privileged) institutions and other structures of prestige/officiality. It makes sense to me that individual experience has truth in it as much as other kinds of data. It is part of the observable world. But can it be replicated? (This is a main criterion for what constitutes valid ‘scientific’ data.) Of course it could be, if a person and his/her exact life path could be replicated in exactly the same way. (This is, obviously, not possible at this point in our technology, nor would it be necessarily desirable.)

Why does more distance = more truth? I feel it ought to be more like

more vantage points = more truth, or perhaps

more dynamism = more truth.

I think anthropology makes room for this viewpoint—this way of knowing, of evaluating—more than any other discipline. And although there is a large strain of mechanistic thinking (which is useful within its scope, as with other conventional ‘sciences’), by far anthropology is the most self-aware and inclusive scientific discipline.