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Briefly surfacing.
13 November 2010 00:09I went to the Science Library at one point today to get a book out of the Anthropology section, and I found this written inside it:
Anonymous library book graffitier, I know your pain.
If you believe some of theorists you need to be a trained philosopher to make any kind of valid archaeological conclusions. Not that there's much concern with actually making conclusions in most of the things I've read, they're too busy calling each other stupid. It's like a flamewar collided with an introductory philosophy course. Serves me right for choosing the essay topic on polemics, really.
A thought I've been meaning to write down, courtesy of things I read for my essay that end up being only tangentially related:
It seems to me that people who emphasise environmental determinism put humans in a weird place where they react to ecology, but are not actually part of it, either for other humans or for the environment in general. Of course culture is an adaptation, but the environment someone is adapting to also includes all the other humans and all of the other humans from previous generations, and their culture and the things they made and made up. AND groups of people shape the environment around them, so there's a loop there. {And just because something is adaptive doesn't mean that it's 100% the optimal solution or that it can't survive past the time when it was useful.)
And those on the other side of the spectrum, who are more into particularism also sometimes separate humans out, in a weird free-will emphasising way that can smack slightly of religion. But I do agree with them about past people not being too stupid to understand why they do what they do to an extent and negotiating and altering the system and stuff.
This is degenerating into waffle because I am le tired. Here, have a Gundam Unicorn screenshot, I'm going to bed:
Maybe-Char, why have you got a pillow stuffed down the front of your coat.
Gundam Unicorn is so good.
I should start doing screenshot anime recaps again.
Anonymous library book graffitier, I know your pain.
If you believe some of theorists you need to be a trained philosopher to make any kind of valid archaeological conclusions. Not that there's much concern with actually making conclusions in most of the things I've read, they're too busy calling each other stupid. It's like a flamewar collided with an introductory philosophy course. Serves me right for choosing the essay topic on polemics, really.
A thought I've been meaning to write down, courtesy of things I read for my essay that end up being only tangentially related:
It seems to me that people who emphasise environmental determinism put humans in a weird place where they react to ecology, but are not actually part of it, either for other humans or for the environment in general. Of course culture is an adaptation, but the environment someone is adapting to also includes all the other humans and all of the other humans from previous generations, and their culture and the things they made and made up. AND groups of people shape the environment around them, so there's a loop there. {And just because something is adaptive doesn't mean that it's 100% the optimal solution or that it can't survive past the time when it was useful.)
And those on the other side of the spectrum, who are more into particularism also sometimes separate humans out, in a weird free-will emphasising way that can smack slightly of religion. But I do agree with them about past people not being too stupid to understand why they do what they do to an extent and negotiating and altering the system and stuff.
This is degenerating into waffle because I am le tired. Here, have a Gundam Unicorn screenshot, I'm going to bed:
Maybe-Char, why have you got a pillow stuffed down the front of your coat.
Gundam Unicorn is so good.
I should start doing screenshot anime recaps again.