Response To The Study Of Anthropology
Sidny Elliott
Prof. AnnMarie Beasley, M.A.
Anthropology 300
23 September 2014
WRITTEN RESPONSE 1: ANTHROPOLOGY AND THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD What is Anthropology? Anthropology is that study of human kind as a whole, with …ology meaning “study of” and anthrop… meaning “humankind”. Anthropology also has four sub disciplines, physical/biological anthropology that studies humans as biological organisms, cultural anthropology/ethnology the study of cultural innovations and interactions, linguistics the understanding of human language its origins and use, and lastly archaeology the study of historic and prehistoric cultures through material remains left behind that give us insight to what life could have been like in those times and how the …show more content…
During an interview with Greg Ross, Sapolsky was asked how he developed the urge and ability to write for a audience, and his response was, “I think the key thing was my starting to do fieldwork in Africa. For about a dozen years, I 'd spend three, four months a year fairly isolated in a tent, out in a national park. Do that regularly and you get desperately dependent on mail from anyone, and thus you send out letters to every person you 've ever met in your life, in the hopes of someone writing back. I think that 's where writing started to get in my blood.” Ross also asked Sapolsky, “Is it hard to make the transition from living with baboon populations in Africa to working in a lab in Palo Alto? Are you able to spend much time doing fieldwork now?” and Sapolsky’s response was, “Less and less—I have young kids, who aren 't old enough yet to go out into the field (soon!), so I 've drastically cut back on fieldwork time. The transitions are actually simple by now—I 've been doing it for 28 years. There was a period during grad school in New York where I 'd spend a Friday morning with the baboons, break camp in the afternoon, drive to Nairobi, get a Saturday morning plane flight and, thanks to time differences, be on a subway in Manhattan by Sunday morning, doing the first hormone assays on baboon samples that afternoon. No problem. Then, naturally, about a week later I 'd disintegrate into sleeplessness and culture
Prof. AnnMarie Beasley, M.A.
Anthropology 300
23 September 2014
WRITTEN RESPONSE 1: ANTHROPOLOGY AND THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD What is Anthropology? Anthropology is that study of human kind as a whole, with …ology meaning “study of” and anthrop… meaning “humankind”. Anthropology also has four sub disciplines, physical/biological anthropology that studies humans as biological organisms, cultural anthropology/ethnology the study of cultural innovations and interactions, linguistics the understanding of human language its origins and use, and lastly archaeology the study of historic and prehistoric cultures through material remains left behind that give us insight to what life could have been like in those times and how the …show more content…
During an interview with Greg Ross, Sapolsky was asked how he developed the urge and ability to write for a audience, and his response was, “I think the key thing was my starting to do fieldwork in Africa. For about a dozen years, I 'd spend three, four months a year fairly isolated in a tent, out in a national park. Do that regularly and you get desperately dependent on mail from anyone, and thus you send out letters to every person you 've ever met in your life, in the hopes of someone writing back. I think that 's where writing started to get in my blood.” Ross also asked Sapolsky, “Is it hard to make the transition from living with baboon populations in Africa to working in a lab in Palo Alto? Are you able to spend much time doing fieldwork now?” and Sapolsky’s response was, “Less and less—I have young kids, who aren 't old enough yet to go out into the field (soon!), so I 've drastically cut back on fieldwork time. The transitions are actually simple by now—I 've been doing it for 28 years. There was a period during grad school in New York where I 'd spend a Friday morning with the baboons, break camp in the afternoon, drive to Nairobi, get a Saturday morning plane flight and, thanks to time differences, be on a subway in Manhattan by Sunday morning, doing the first hormone assays on baboon samples that afternoon. No problem. Then, naturally, about a week later I 'd disintegrate into sleeplessness and culture