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قراءة كتاب Anthropology As a Science and as a Branch of University Education in the United States

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‏اللغة: English
Anthropology
As a Science and as a Branch of University Education in the United States

Anthropology As a Science and as a Branch of University Education in the United States

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دار النشر: Project Gutenberg
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his physical nature, and seeks to trace the intellectual development of communities by studying the growth of government, laws, arts, languages, religions, and society.

The third division, Ethnography, is geographic and descriptive in its plans of research. It studies the subdivision and migrations of races, local traits, peculiarities and customs, and confines itself to matters of present observation.

Finally, Archæology comes in to supply the material which neither history nor present observation can furnish. It pries into the obscurity of the remotest periods of man’s life on earth, and gathers thousands of facts forgotten by historians and overlooked by contemporaries. Often these unconsidered trifles prove of priceless value, and furnish the key to the real life of ancient nations.

Means of Practical Instruction.

Anthropology is not a theoretical science. It is essentially experimental and practical, a science of observation and operative procedures. It cannot be learned by merely reading books and attending lectures. The student must literally put his hand to the work.

For that reason every institution for teaching Anthropology must have a Laboratory attached to it; and in that Laboratory the best part of the work will be done.

Such a Laboratory will naturally be divided into two departments; one devoted to the study of the physical characteristics of man, the other to the investigation of the products of his industry. The former will be more especially related to the branch of Somatology; the latter, to those of Ethnology, Ethnography, and Archæology. The efforts of the Laboratory instructors will be directed to training the perceptions of the students in the requirements of this science and to giving them the practical knowledge and manual dexterity necessary to employ its tests.

Connected with the Laboratory, and really forming part of it, will be a Museum, of such extent as circumstances permit. It will include crania and osteological specimens; art-products, arranged both ethnologically, that is, in series showing their evolution, and ethnographically, that is, illustrating the geographical provinces and ethnic areas from which they are derived; and archæological specimens typical of prehistoric and proto-historic culture.

Hand in hand with the Laboratory work should proceed Library Labor. There is a strong tendency in students of sciences of observation to read only for immediate purposes and on current topics. Few acquaint themselves with the history even of their own special branches; an ignorance which often results injuriously on the effectiveness of their work. To correct this, a series of tasks in the literature of the science should regularly be assigned.

Finally, all that has been proposed must be supplemented by a course of Field-work, in which the student must be trained to apply his acquirements in really adding to the stores of knowledge by independent and unaided exertion.

I do not rest satisfied with presenting these general statements. More detail will very properly be demanded by any one seriously considering the foundation of a chair or department in this branch.

I have drawn up, therefore, and append, a scheme for a course or courses of lectures; a plan for laboratory instruction; another for library work; a sketch of what should be done in the field; and finally, I name a few of the best text-books on the various subdivisions of the general science.

I would ask the particular attention of those interested in this science to the classification and nomenclature which I here present. It is the result of a careful collation of all the leading European writers on the subject and of consultation with several of the most thoughtful in this country.

There is, unfortunately, considerable diversity in the arrangements and terms adopted by

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