Abstract
I WAS, unfortunately, unable to take part in the discussion on a possible Anthropological Service at Edinburgh, referred to in the leading article in NATURE of November 10, but there is one point on which I would have insisted had I been present: the danger of a little knowledge. Anthropology is fundamentally a branch of biology, not of literature or philosophy, except in so far as the latter is biological. It is, perhaps, the most complicated of all the branches of biology, and the branch in which the collection of precise data is the most difficult. To me it is inconceivable that a sound knowledge of anthropology can be obtained without a preliminary training in biological method. At present anthropological studv, especially that of the physical or anatomical side, is in a state of chaos, largely because the comparative student has to make use of information of all degrees of accuracy or the reverse—mostly the reverse. What a missionary said two hundred years ago may carry greater weight than a recent investigation on sound scientific lines.
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ANNANDALE, N. Applied Anthropology. Nature 108, 370 (1921). https://doi.org/10.1038/108370b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/108370b0
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