Nomothetic science and idiographic history in twentieth-century Americanist anthropology

Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences

Volumn 40, Issue 1, 2004, Pages 77-96

  Lyman, R Lee ^a,b   O'Brien, Michael J ^b,c,d  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI   (United States)

^c UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN   (United States)

^d College of Arts and Science ^*

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ANTHROPOLOGY; ARCHEOLOGY; ARTICLE; HISTORY; HUMAN; SCIENCE; UNITED STATES;

ANTHROPOLOGY; ARCHAEOLOGY; HISTORY; HISTORY, 20TH CENTURY; HUMANS; SCIENCE; UNITED STATES;

EID: 2342534345     PISSN: 00225061     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1002/jhbs.10180     Document Type: Review

References (121)

1. Aberle, D. F. (1987). Distinguished lecture: What kind of science is anthropology? American Anthropologist, 89, 551-566.
2. Bamforth, D. B., & Spaulding, A. C. (1982). Human behavior, explanation, archaeology, history, and science. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 1, 179-195.
3. Barnett, H. G. (1940). Culture processes. American Anthropologist, 42, 21-48.
4. Bayard, D. T. (1969). Science, theory, and reality in the "new archaeology." American Antiquity, 34, 376-384.
5. Beatty, J. (1995). The evolutionary contingency thesis. In G. Wolters & J. G. Lennox (Eds.), Concepts, theories, and rationality in the biological sciences (pp. 45-81). Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.
6. Bidney, D. (1946). On the so-called anti-evolutionary fallacy: A reply to Leslie A. White. American Anthropologist, 48, 293-297.
7. Binford, L. R. (1962). Archaeology as anthropology. American Antiquity, 28, 217-225.
8. Binford, L. R. (1963). "Red ochre" caches from the Michigan area: A possible case of cultural drift. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, 19, 89-108.
9. Binford, L. R. (1968). Some comments on historical versus processual archaeology. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, 24, 267-275.
10. Binford, S. R., & Binford, L. R. (Eds.) (1968). New perspectives in archeology. Chicago: Aldine.
11. Boas, F. (1887). The study of geography. Science, 9, 137-141.
12. Boas, F. (1896). The limitations of the comparative method of anthropology. Science, 4, 901-908.
13. Boas, F. (1904). The history of anthropology. Science, 20, 513-524.
14. Boas, F. (1911). Review of "Methode der ethnologie" by F. Graebner. Science, 34, 804-810.
15. Boas, F. (1932). The aims of anthropological research. Science, 76, 605-613.
16. Boas, F. (1936). History and science in anthropology: A reply. American Anthropologist, 38, 137-141.
17. Boas, F. (1940). The aims of ethnology. In F. Boas (Ed.), Race, Language and Culture (pp. 626-638). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Originally presented in 1888)
18. Bock, K. E. (1952). Evolution and historical process. American Anthropologist, 54, 486-496.
19. Boyd, R., & Richerson, P. J. (1985). Culture and the evolutionary process. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
20. Brandon, R. N. (1990). Adaptation and environment. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
21. Brandon, R. N. (1997). Does biology have laws? The experimental evidence. Philosophy of Science, Proceedings, 64, S444-S457.
22. Buettner-Janusch, J. (1957). Boas and Mason: Particularism versus generalization. American Anthropologist, 59, 318-324.
23. Caldwell, J. R. (1959). The new American archeology. Science, 129, 303-307.
24. Carneiro, R. L. (2000). The muse of history and the science of culture. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Press.
25. Clarke, D. L. (1972). Review of "Explanation in archaeology: An explicitly scientific approach" by P. J. Watson, S. A. LeBlanc, & C. L. Redman. Antiquity, 46, 237-239.
26. Cleland, C. E. (2002). Methodological and epistemic differences between historical science and experimental science. Philosophy of Science, 69, 474-496.
27. Clements, F. E., Schenck, S. M., & Brown, T. K. (1926). A new objective method for showing special relationships. American Anthropologist, 28, 585-604.
28. Cooper, G. (1996). Theoretical modeling and biological laws. Philosophy of Science, Proceedings, 63, S28-S35.
29. Cooper, R. A. (2002). Scientific knowledge of the past is possible. American Biology Teacher, 64, 427-432.
30. Dunnell, R. C. (1982). Science, social science, and common sense: The agonizing dilemma of modern archaeology. Journal of Anthropological Research, 38, 1-25.
31. Dunnell, R. C. (1986). Methodological issues in Americanist artifact classification. Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory, 9, 149-207.
32. Ereshefsky, M. (1992). The historical nature of evolutionary theory. In M. H. Nitecki & D. V. Nitecki (Eds.), History and evolution (pp. 81-99). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
33. Flannery, K. V. (1967). Culture history v. culture process: A debate in American archaeology. Scientific American, 217(2), 119-122.
34. Flannery, K. V. (1973). Archeology with a capital "S." In C. L. Redman (Ed.), Research and theory in current archeology (pp. 47-53). New York: Wiley.
35. Fritz, J. M., & Plog, F. T. (1970). The nature of archaeological explanation. American Antiquity, 35, 405-412.
36. Gans, C. (1993). On the merits of adequacy. American Journal of Science, 293A, 391-406.
37. Goldenweiser, A. (1916). Diffusion vs. independent invention: A rejoinder to Professor G. Elliot Smith. Science, 44, 531-533.
38. Goldenweiser, A. (1925). Diffusion and the American school of historical ethnology. American Journal of Sociology, 31, 19-38.
39. Gould, S. J. (1986). Evolution and the triumph of homology, or why history matters. American Scientist, 74, 60-69.
40. Gould, S. J. (1989). Wonderful life: The Burgess Shale and the nature of history. New York: Norton.
41. Greenberg, J. H. (1968). Culture history. International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 6, 448-455.
42. Hammel, E. A. (1979). Experimental history. Journal of Anthropological Research, 35, 274-291.
43. Harris, M. (1968). The rise of anthropological theory. New York: Crowell.
44. Hatch, E. (1973). Theories of man and culture. New York: Columbia University Press.
45. Hempel, C. G. (1965). The function of general laws in history. In C. G. Hempel, Aspects of scientific explanation (pp. 231-243). New York: The Free Press. (Originally published in 1942)
46. Herskovits, M. J. (1945). The processes of cultural change. In R. Linton (Ed.), The science of man in the world crisis (pp. 143-170). New York: Columbia University Press.
47. Holt, W. S. (1940). The idea of scientific history in America. Journal of the History of Ideas, 1, 352-362.
48. Hull, D. L. (1970). Contemporary systematic philosophies. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, 1, 19-54.
49. Hull, D. L. (1974). Philosophy of biological science. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
50. Jacob, F. (1977). Evolution and tinkering. Science, 196, 1161-1166.
51. Kluckhohn, C. (1939). The place of theory in anthropological studies. Philosophy of Science, 6, 328-344.
52. Kluckhohn, C. (1940). The conceptual structure in Middle American studies. In C. L. Hay, S. K. Lothrop, R. L. Linton, & H. L. Shapiro (Eds.), The Maya and their neighbors (pp. 41-51). New York: Appleton-Century.
53. Kroeber, A. L. (1935). History and science in anthropology. American Anthropologist, 37, 539-569.
54. Kroeber, A. L. (1944). Configurations of culture growth. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
55. Kroeber, A. L. (1946). History and evolution. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, 2, 1-15.
56. Kroeber, A. L. (1948). Anthropology, revised edition. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company.
57. Kroeber, A. L. (1952a). So-called social science. In A. L. Kroeber, The nature of culture (pp. 66-78). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Originally published in 1936)
58. Kroeber, A. L. (1952b). Introduction. In A. L. Kroeber, The nature of culture (pp. 3-11). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
59. Kroeber, A. L. (1956). The place of Boas in anthropology. American Anthropologist, 58, 151-159.
60. Kroeber, A. L. (1957). An anthropologist looks at history. Pacific Historical Review, 26, 281-287.
61. Kroeber, A. L. (1960). Evolution, history, and culture. In S. Tax (Ed.), Evolution after Darwin Vol. II: The evolution of man (pp. 1-16). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
62. Kroeber, A. L. (1963). History and anthropology in the study of civilizations. In T. Kroeber (Ed.), An anthropologist looks at history (pp. 160-171). Berkeley: University of California Press. (Originally presented in 1958)
63. Lamberg-Karlovsky, C. C. (1970). Operations problems in archeology. American Anthropological Association Bulletin, 3(3)(2), 111-114.
64. Lewis, H. S. (2001). Boas, Darwin, science, and anthropology. Current Anthropology, 42, 381-406.
65. Lewontin, R. C. (1974a). Darwin and Mendel - The materialist revolution. In J. Neyman (Ed.), The heritage of Copernicus: Theories "pleasing to the mind" (pp. 166-183). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
66. Lewontin, R. C. (1974b). The genetic basis of evolutionary change. New York: Columbia University Press.
67. Lowie, R. H. (1912). On the principle of convergence in ethnology. Journal of American Folk-Lore, 25, 24-42.
68. Lowie, R. H. (1918). Survivals and the historical method. American Journal of Sociology, 23, 529-535.
69. Lyman, R. L., & O'Brien, M. J. (2001). Introduction. In G. R. Willey & P. Phillips, Method and theory in American archaeology (pp. I.1-I.78). Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press.
70. Lyman, R. L., & O'Brien, M. J. (2002). Classification. In J. P. Hart & J. E. Terrell (Eds.), Darwin and archaeology: A handbook of key concepts (pp. 69-88). Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey.
71. Lyman, R. L., & O'Brien, M. J. (2003a). W. C. McKern and the midwestern taxonomic method. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press.
72. Lyman, R. L., & O'Brien, M. J. (2003b). Cultural traits: Units of analysis in early twentieth-century anthropology. Journal of Anthropological Research, 59, 225-250.
73. Lyman, R. L., O'Brien, M. J., & Dunnell, R. C. (1997). The rise and fall of culture history. New York: Plenum Press.
74. Mayr, E. (1959). Darwin and the evolutionary theory in biology. In B. J. Meggers (Ed.), Evolution and anthropology: A centennial appraisal (pp. 1-10). Washington, DC: Anthropological Society of Washington.
75. Meggers, B. J. (1955). The coming of age of American archeology. In B. J. Meggers & C. Evans (Eds.), New interpretations of aboriginal American culture history (pp. 116-129). Washington, DC: Anthropological Society of Washington.
76. Moore, J. A. (2002). From Genesis to genetics: The case of evolution and creationism. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
77. Morgan, C. G. (1973). Archaeology and explanation. World Archaeology, 4, 259-276.
78. Morgan, C. G. (1974). Explanation and scientific archaeology. World Archaeology, 6, 133-137.
79. Murdock, G. P. (1956). How culture changes. In H. L. Shapiro (Ed.), Man, culture, and society (pp. 247-260). New York: Oxford University Press.
80. Murdock, G. P. (1957). Anthropology as comparative science. Behavioral Science, 2, 249-254.
81. O'Brien, M. J., & Lyman, R. L. (1999). Seriation, stratigraphy, and index fossils: The backbone of archaeological dating. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Press.
82. O'Brien, M. J., & Lyman, R. L. (2000). Applying evolutionary archaeology: A systematic approach. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Press.
83. O'Brien, M. J., & Lyman, R. L. (2002a). The epistemological nature of archaeological units. Anthropological Theory, 2, 37-56.
84. O'Brien, M. J., & Lyman, R. L. (2002b). Evolutionary archeology: Current status and future prospects. Evolutionary Anthropology 11, 26-36.
85. O'Brien, M. J., & Lyman, R. L. (2003). Cladistics and archaeology. Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press.
86. O'Hara, R. J. (1988). Homage to Clio, or, toward an historical philosophy for evolutionary biology. Systematic Zoology, 37, 142-155.
87. Padian, K. (1999). Charles Darwin's views of classification in theory and practice. Systematic Biology, 48, 352-364.
88. Radin, P. (1933). The method and theory of ethnology: An essay in criticism. New York: McGraw-Hill.
89. Renfrew, C. (1973). Review of "Explanation in archaeology: An explicitly scientific approach" by P. J. Watson, S. A. LeBlanc, & C. L. Redman. American Anthropologist, 75, 1928-1930.
90. Schuyler, R. L. (1973). Review of "Explanation in archaeology: An explicitly scientific approach" by P. J. Watson, S. A. LeBlanc, & C. L. Redman. American Antiquity, 38, 372-374.
91. Scriven, M. (1959). Explanation and prediction in evolutionary theory. Science, 130, 477-482.
92. Shore, B. (1996). Culture in mind: Cognition, culture and the problem of meaning. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
93. Simpson, G. G. (1963a). Historical science. In C. C. Albritton, Jr. (Ed.), The fabric of geology (pp. 24-48). Stanford, CA: Freeman, Cooper.
94. Simpson, G. G. (1963b). Biology and the nature of science. Science, 139, 81-88.
95. Simpson, G. G. (1970). Uniformitarianism: An inquiry into principle, theory, and method in geohistory and biohistory. In M. K. Hecht & W. C. Steere (Eds.), Essays in evolution and genetics in honor of Theodosius Dobzhansky (pp. 43-96). New York: Appleton.
96. Sober, E. (1980). Evolution, population thinking, and essentialism. Philosophy of Science, 47, 350-383.
97. Sober, E. (1993). Philosophy of biology. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
98. Spencer, C. S. (1997). Evolutionary approaches in archaeology. Journal of Archaeological Research, 5, 209-264.
99. Steward, J. H. (1929). Diffusion and independent invention: A critique of logic. American Anthropologist, 31, 491-495.
100. Steward, J. H. (1953). Evolution and process. In A. L. Kroeber (Ed.) Anthropology today (pp. 313-326). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
101. Steward, J. H. (1955). Theory of culture change. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
102. Stocking, G. W., Jr. (1965). Franz Boas and the culture concept in historical perspective. American Anthropologist, 68, 867-882.
103. Taylor, W. W. (1948). A study of archeology. American Anthropological Association Memoir 69.
104. Teggart, F. J. (1942). Causation in historical events. Journal of the History of Ideas, 3, 3-11.
105. Trigger, B. G. (1970). Aims in prehistoric archaeology. Antiquity, 44, 26-37.
106. Trigger, B. G. (1973). The future of archeology is the past. In C. L. Redman (Ed.), Research and theory in current archeology (pp. 95-111). New York: Wiley.
107. Watson, P. J. (1973a). Explanation and models: The prehistorian as philosopher of science and the prehistorian as excavator of the past. In C. Renfrew (Ed.), The explanation of culture change (pp. 47-52). London: Duckworth.
108. Watson, P. J. (1973b). The future of archeology in anthropology: Culture history and social science. In C. L. Redman (Ed.), Research and theory in current archeology (pp. 111-124). New York: Wiley.
109. Watson, P. J., LeBlanc, S. A., & Redman, C. L. (1971). Explanation in archeology: An explicitly scientific approach. New York: Columbia University Press.
110. Watson, P. J., LeBlanc, S. A., & Redman, C. L. (1974). The covering law model in archaeology: Practical uses and formal interpretations. World Archaeology, 6, 125-132.
111. Watson, R. A. (1966). Is geology different: A critical discussion of "The fabric of geology." Philosophy of Science, 33, 172-185.
112. Watson, R. A. (1969). Explanation and prediction in geology. Journal of Geology, 77, 488-494.
113. Wax, M. (1956). The limitations of Boas' anthropology. American Anthropologist, 58, 63-74.
114. White, L. A. (1938). Science is sciencing. Philosophy of Science, 5, 369-389.
115. White, L. A. (1945). History, evolutionism and functionalism: Three types of interpretation of culture. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, 1, 221-248.
116. White, L. A. (1946). Kroeber's "Configurations of culture growth." American Anthropologist, 48, 78-93.
117. White, L. A. (1949). The science of culture: A study of man and civilization. New York: Grove Press.
118. White, L. A. (1959a). The concept of evolution in anthropology. In B. J. Meggers (Ed.), Evolution and anthropology: A centennial appraisal (pp. 106-124). Washington, DC: Anthropological Society of Washington.
119. White, L. A. (1959b). The evolution of culture. New York: McGraw-Hill.
120. Willey, G. R., & Phillips, P. (1958). Method and theory in American archaeology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
121. Wolverton, S., & Lyman, R. L. (2000). Immanence and configuration in analogical reasoning. North American Archaeologist, 21, 233-247.