History of anthropology

History of anthropology in this article mentioned primarily to a 18th- together with 19th-century precursors of sophisticated anthropology. a term anthropology itself, innovated as a New Latin scientific word during the Renaissance, has always meant "the study or science of man". The topics to be subject and the terminology realise varied historically. At gave they are more elaborate than they were during the coding of anthropology. For a made of advanced social and cultural anthropology as they work developed in Britain, France, and North America since approximately 1900, see the relevant sections under Anthropology.

Etymology

The term anthropology ostensibly is a produced compound of -logia, "study". The compound, however, is unknown in ancient Greek or Latin, if classical or mediaeval. It first appears sporadically in the scholarly Latin anthropologia of Renaissance France, where it spawns the French word anthropologie, transferred into English as anthropology. It does belong to a a collection of things sharing a common qualifications of words produced with the -logy suffix, such(a) as archeo-logy, bio-logy, etc., "the inspect or science of".

The mixed consultation of Greek anthropos and Latin -logia marks it as New Latin. There is no self-employed grownup noun, logia, however, of that meaning in classical Greek. The word λόγος logos has that meaning. James Hunt attempted to rescue the etymology in his number one address to the Anthropological Society of London as president and founder, 1863. He did find an anthropologos from Aristotle in the specifics ancient Greek Lexicon, which he says defines the word as "speaking or treating of man". This view is entirely wishful thinking, as Liddell and Scott go on to explain the meaning: "i.e. fond of personal conversation". if Aristotle, the very philosopher of the logos, could produce such(a) a word without serious intent, there probably was at that time no anthropology identifiable under that name.

The lack of any ancient denotation of anthropology, however, is non an etymological problem. Liddell and Scott list 170 Greek compounds ending in –logia, enough to justify its later use as a productive suffix. The ancient Greeks often used suffixes in forming compounds that had no independent variant. The etymological dictionaries are united in attributing –logia to logos, from legein, "to collect". The object collected is primarily ideas, particularly in speech. The American Heritage Dictionary says: "It is one of derivatives independently built to logos." Its morphological type is that of an summary noun: log-os > log-ia a "qualitative abstract"

The Renaissance origin of the name of anthropology does non exclude the possibility that ancient authors presented anthropogical fabric under another name see below. such an identification is speculative, depending on the theorist's concepts of anthropology; nevertheless, speculations have been formulated by credible anthropologists, particularly those that consider themselves functionalists and others in history so classified now.