Justice refers to the constant and perpetual disposition of legal matters or disputes to render every person his or her due. The concept of justice traces its origin to the Greek language. The Greek work “dike” corresponds to the idea of staying in one’s assigned place or role. The Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle developed
Virtually all fields of science are afflicted to some extent by hoaxes. Anthropology is no different, with each of its subfields having been subjected to at least a measure of intellectual dishonesty and fakery. Though the motives behind anthropological hoaxes have varied, the element underlying their success has always been the same: an audience predisposed
In a famous manifesto, the geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky (1900-1975) claimed in 1973 that “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” One could also wonder if anything in anthropology makes sense except in the light of evolution. Indeed, there is a part of anthropology that does not deal with evolutionary issues. This
Concepts The term ethics was first coined by the philosopher and physician Aristotle (384-322 BC), in his book Ethika Nikomacheia (ethics for his son Nikomachos). Ethics has its roots in the noun ethos, which means “custom.” Aristotle understood it as the rational study of custom which, methodically, as a practical science has not the exactness
The study of ecology and anthropology, here termed ecological anthropology, is at its most basic level the examination of the relationship between humans and the natural environments in which they live. Although the nature of how anthropologists approach this relationship has changed and varied considerably over the past century, ecological anthropology is best characterized as
From the inception of the discipline of anthropology, ethnographic monographs have dealt with the economies of the people under discussion as a matter of course. The evolutionists were fundamentally interested in levels of technology and environmental “adaptations,” and functionalists interpreted all social systems in terms of the satisfaction of basic human needs. Subsequently, anthropologists influenced
Human beings are curious by nature. In that way, we are all anthropologists in the sense that we possess the universal trait of “curiosity.” From the time that a child asks his mother, “Where did I come from?” human beings question why we were made, why we were born, and where we will go. We
Biological Anthropology Definition Biological anthropology is concerned with the origin, evolution and diversity of humankind. The field was called physical anthropology until the late twentieth century, reflecting the field’s primary concern with cataloging anatomical differences among human and primate groups. Biological anthropology is one of the four subfields of anthropology, together with archaeology, linguistic anthropology
Biological anthropology is the study of human biological variation and its genetic and environmental causes within the framework of evolution. The roots of physical anthropology, the name usually given to this subfield of anthropology until recently, lie in the 19th century. However, there was no university-based training in the subfield until well into the 20th
Concepts The term bioethics was first coined by the biologist Van Rensselaer Potter in his book Bioethics, Science of Survival (1970). The term is taken from two Greek words: bios, the Greek word for “life,” and ethics, which has its roots in the noun ethos, meaning “custom. “Van Rensselaer used it for ethical questions concerning