Anthropologie générale chapter 1-5 Flashcards
How is anthropology different from philosophy, in terms of methodology?
Philosophy is a purely mental exercise, is a mental intellectual reflexion it based on asking questions and try to find answers (not a science but it is the origin of all science) but anthropology is a discipline based on fieldwork, it is a science.
In anthropology we have fieldwork (fields based), it’s an empirical science
How’s anthropology different from sociology in terms of scope?
- anthropology is interested in behavior on biology past
- it interested in human one more in one dimension, let’s say as anthropologist I see a man as primate “in biology” but he is also somebody who has culture and language and he has past so that’s mean Anthropology is holistic and comparative.
The Anthropologie is a cumulative science
Why do you think anthropologist more interested on studying societies?
It’s enable them to understand and compare between societies
What is the purpose of anthropology, and what s her main interest?
To understand what it is to be human, it goes to the field and study specific cultural context and compares
It’s to understand the human condition
why is anthropology useful in many ways ?
- it helps understand that we are not all the same
- it helps us go beyond epistemological basis
-it also helps us create peace between countries and manage globalisation
what is the difference between a hypothesis and a theory?
- a theory need material evidence for its development over time and across space, it’s testable, unified, and fruitful, it’s already established, it’s a working model which can be widely applied
- a hypothesis is an intelligent guess which still need to be tested
what is essentialism ?
according to plato essentialism iis a view that all living things that share the same essence belong to the same “natural kind” and there are many natural kinds in the world,each of which i the result of the imperfect incarnation in the physical world of one or another eternal form or ideal.
What is the difference between Ethnology and Ethnography?
Ethnography: We take one particular society and we study the behaviors but the Ethnology is the method adopted for this study and we use it also in sociology.
what is the great chain of being ( think of Aristotle)
According to Aristotle, is that kinds of organisms could be arranged from the most primitive to the most advanced and complex, and the attributes of one kind of an organism always overlap to some extent with the attributes of organisms closest to in the classification so that the difference between adjacent organisms were slight: (principle of continuity)
(4) What is transformational evolution? (Think of Lamarck)
is the notion that an organism can pass on to its offspring physical characteristics that the parent organism acquired through use during its lifetime.
What made Darwin posit the existence of a mechanism of “natural selection”?
When he was travelling, he found that there were different species that are more adapted to some kind of food and survive
What forces must work together for natural selection to operate?
Four conditions are needed for natural selection to occur: Population, heredity traits, fitness, environment. If they are met, natural selection automatically happens.
What does “fitness” mean?
Fitness means the adaptability, ability to survive and to procreate. It’s the score of how many children you can generate.
Why didn’t Darwin have all the tools he needed to prove that he was right?
Because there havent enough science tools at that time and also it was impossible to observe the evolution of a species which takes a very long time and he didn’t know how traits get inherited.
what is industrial melanism
Industrial melanism is a typical case of natural selection. This is when an industrial change has changed the environment so that the skin color of the birch moths turns into another color.
How did genetics, first Mendelian, then molecular, contribute to the contemporary (neo-Darwinian) evolutionary synthesis?
Mendel suspected a trait that have been inherited. Mendelian genetics and Molecular biology participated in the neo-Darwinian synthesis because it provided us tools that Darwin didn’t have at that time
What is the difference between genotype and phenotype, and why are they important?
Phenotype: is what we see from a person ex: skin color, shape…ect
Genes play a role in the genotype. There is no one to one relation between phenotype and genotype. There are other criteria that affects our phenotype and sometimes some of our genes are silenced or activated according to the surrounding environment.
Every trait has two forms: one dominant, the other recessive. When we have a small population, a trait can spread easily.
How long ago, approximately, did primates diverge from other mammals?
Primates diverged from the rest of mammals about 60 to 70 million years ago.
What are some of the shared traits of human and non-human primates that set them apart from other mammals?
An increase in brain size,
an increase in the complexity of the neo-cortex, an increasing dependence of the sense of sight (deeper vision),
a reduction in the number of teeth,
a reduction of the projection of the face and a reduction in the sense of smell, nails and finger prints, the use of the palms of the hand and foot rather than the toes for walking,
the presence of five digits on the hands with opposable thumb,
the presence of the clavicle or collar bone allowing for flexibility in the shoulder joint.
Know the seven levels of Linnaean taxonomy, and the place of Homo sapiens within it
-kingdom: Animalia
-Phylum: chordata
- class : mammalia
- Order: primates
- family: hominidae
- Genus : Homo
-Species : H. sapiens
How long ago, approximately, did hominoids (superfamily Hominoidea) diverge from other primates?
Hominoids diverged from other primates about 18 million years ago
How are hominoids different from other primates?
This superfamily of primates has specific characteristics (they don’t have tales), a tendency toward bipedal motion, larger bodies, spends more time in the ground than trees, are more terrestrial.
What extant (living) genera are included in Hominoidea? (There are five)
- Human: homo
- Chimpanzee, bonobos ,: pan
- Gorilla: gorillini
- Orangutan : pongo
- Gibbons: They are considered apes, but they are sometimes distinguished as lesser apes, they are monogamous, with almost no sexual dimorphism.
Why are primates considered “generalized” organisms?
Because they are distinguished mainly by a tendency to retain specific parts or different traits from different ancestors that other animals have lost during their evolution.
