"Napoleon Chagnon is a Living World Treasure. Arguably our greatest anthropologist [...] Chagnon came along at just the right time for the Yanomamö and for scientific anthropology. Encroaching civilisation was about to close the last window on a tribal world that embodied vanishing clues to our own prehistory: a world of forest "gardens", of kin-groups fissioning into genetically salient sub-groups, of male combat over women and trans-generational revenge, complex alliances and enmities; webs of calculated obligation, debt, grudge and gratitude that might underlie much of our social psychology and even law, ethics and economics."
Tā Ričards Dokinss par Napoleonu Šanonu. Apbēdinoši, ka savos centienos popularizēt evolūcijas teoriju un zinātnisko metodi kopumā, nopelniem bagāti zinātnieki sāk slīgt nejēdzībās. Dokinsa gadījumā apbēdina ne vien neizprotams patoss (greatest anthropologist?), bet arī standarta eksotizēšana un etnocentrisms. Lai gan tas nav nekas neierasts, ka nespeciālisti, jaucot metodoloģisko relatīvismu ar radikālu kulturālo relatīvismu, lai pieņemtu apgaismotu pozīciju, atvedina ļoti problemātiskus secinājumus par, piemēram, civilizāciju. Bet Šanons, kā izrādās, ir zinātniskais moceklis. Šeit emocionālais fons mainās gandrīz no skumji uz smieklīgi. Lietojot reliģiozu retoriku, Dokinss spriež: "Chagnon committed the unforgivable sin, cardinal heresy in the eyes of a
certain kind of social scientist: he took Darwin seriously." Nē, ko viņš darīja, nav savietojams ar pētniecības ētiku un etnogrāfisko metodi un, ārpus postmoderni apmātu skolāru prātiem, "Šanona problēma" nav saistāma ar viņa (mis)application of natural selection theory. Problēmu kopumā labi ekplicējis antropologs, ko var saukt par izcilu, Maršals Sālins.
I have often been asked in recent days if there is any connection between my objection to the military research of the NAS [National Academy of Sciences] and to Chagnon’s election. There is indeed a strong anthropological connection, insofar as the one and the other would impose cognate versions of bourgeois individualism, taken as given and natural, on the rest of humanity.
( tālāk )
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