Time and the anthropologists

TL;DRAbstract

The basic argument of the previous chapters was that the reason why anthropologists cannot ignore the work of cognitive scientists, and for that matter vice versa, was that what they study is a phenomenon that is both cognitive and historical. If we attempt to separate the two, as the opposition between ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ attempts to do, we are left without a subject matter. The attempt on the part of anthropologists to ignore the cognitive simply leads them to making assumptions in their writing which, because they are merely implicit, are not critically examined. The purpose of this chapter is twofold. First, it shows the presence of these unexamined and therefore dangerous cognitive assumptions in texts which make no reference to empirical or theoretical work in psychology. Secondly, it will show how, if we scrutinise the implicit psychological assumptions present in the anthropological work and place these side by side with what we know from cognitive science, we can not only q

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