< Back to Volume 17, Number 1
Volume 17: Number 1: Article 1
Problems Reporting Anomalous Observations in Anthropology
Cara Richards, Transylvania University, Lexington, KY
The scientific method has provided the world with an enormous fund
of knowledge. When scientific techniques of observation, experimentation,
and analysis were formulated, they were new ways of considering phenomena,
such as sunshine, magnetism, gravity, and many other puzzles. After
centuries of using scientific methods, however, the fund of knowledge
has led to an erosion of the "discovery" attitude of early scientists.
Practitioners now base most of their ideas on received knowledge and
often simply accept as true what "science knows". Unfortunately, not
all of the assumptions based on these "truths" or even the "truths"
themselves are correct. Yet many scientists have reached a point where
they now seem to believe that if a phenomenon cannot be explained, or
does not fit easily into existing theory, it does not exist. This attitude
is similar to the beliefs of Europeans in the centuries before Columbus
who looked to Aristotle or the Bible as the source of all "truth" and
killed or exiled those who questioned. In this article, I examine the
consequences of some of the modern assumptions. One assumption is that
people never arrived in the Americas prior to about 11,000 years ago.
The other is the assumption that there is something called the "supernatural"
that must be understood by "secular" explanations.
Keywords: science, supernatural, anomalies, scientific assumptions,
"truth"
FULL TEXT:
Problems Reporting Anomalous Observations in Anthropology
To purchase back issues contact Allen Marketing & Management: 1-800-627-0629
