Abstract
NUMEROUS questions of general interest, but in their immediate bearing more nearly affecting those concerned with teaching and research in the study of man, were raised by Dr. Henry Balfour in his Frazer Lecture delivered at Liverpool in 1937 and recently issued in pamphlet form (“Spinners and Weavers in Anthropological Research”. Oxford: at the Clarendon Press, 1938. Pp.19). The science of anthropology is a relatively young science; but its progress in recent years has been remarkably rapid. This has been due largely to a vigorous growth of specialization. So much so, indeed, that not only has it brought about a condition which now renders it unwieldy for the individual, but as Dr. Balfour pointed out, there is a real danger that the major problem, the full comprehension of man's nature and potentialities, may be lost sight of, through increasing individual enthusiasm over one or other branch of the general science of anthropology. Dr. Balfour himself was convinced not merely that there is place for both the ‘generalist’ and the ‘specialist’, but in fact that there is a real need for their co-operation as a condition of orderly advance in the future development of the science. Metaphorically their relation is expressed in the title of Dr. Balfour's lecture. Taking as an example the methods employed in one of the departments of his own special branch of study, technology, he expounds how in his conception of the relation of the diverse methods of study, the ‘spinner’, the specialist, provides the threads of surely grounded data from which the weaver, the ‘generalist’, fashions the fabric of theory. Among the conclusions which follow from this conception to which Dr. Balfour referred, not the least significant is that which develops its bearing on the organization of the curriculum for the anthropological student.
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Methods in the Study of Man. Nature 143, 295 (1939). https://doi.org/10.1038/143295b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/143295b0