Anthropology: What Makes It a Science?

Let’s say you’re asked to form an image for the word “science” in your mind. Most people, myself included, would probably picture something along the lines of a person in a lab coat analyzing DNA or something. This is quite a one-sided view of science, and many scientists never wear lab coats and their jobs don’t involve DNA.

If lab coats aren’t required to make a discipline a “science,” then what is? Webster’s Dictionary defines science as “knowledge acquired by careful observation, by deduction of laws which govern charges and conditions, and by testing these deductions by experiment.” With that definition, practically anything can be studied as a science.

I find anthropology to be one of the least “sciency” of the sciences, but after hearing Dr. Laurel Kendall talk about anthropology, I started thinking about what does make anthropology a science.

I went to Dr. Laurel Kendall’s lecture Picturing Spirits in Korea at the American Museum of Natural History just last week. In her research she asks what makes Korean Shaman’s paintings sacred, rather than just works of art. How is Dr. Kendall’s question and proposed answers scientific? How is her approach different than the countless other philosophers and theologians who have contemplated similar questions?

 One answer is that she reached her conclusions through experimental data and utilization of the scientific method, but I think there’s more to it than that.

Another answer has much to do with how the results are viewed. Theologians are insiders, they study their own religion. They would take the question “what makes an object sacred” and leave the answer within the context of what adherents to their respective religion believe. Philosophers do the opposite. They take this question about sacred art out of the realm of religion and put it into more generalized concepts, but they still keep the answer within the context of belief. Comparative religious scholars compare what makes an object sacred across various religions, but still the answer is in terms of beliefs and religion.

But, when anthropologists – scientists like Dr. Kendall - ask what makes an object sacred, they take the answer in context of culture and society. For example, Dr. Kendall not only discussed what makes a painting sacred to a shaman and her followers, but how the painting is valued by secular art collectors outside of the religion and even outside of Korea With Korean culture is becoming more modernized, native Korean religion and the sacredness of the paintings are changing. This shift makes the study of change possible, and that’s where scientific methods come in.