Acerca de la unidad de las ciencias antropológicas

Abstract

This essay offers the author’s point of view about the Anthropological Sciences. We are reminded that Franz Boas had the vision of consolidating what we know today as Physical Anthropology, Archaeology, Ethnology and Linguistics as the Anthropological Sciences. But this unity is continuously threatened as each discipline is consolidated. Through several examples he shows that Anthropology is truly one, and that in order to understand humankind we have to take each one of its components in to account. He criticizes the limitations held by several authors, precisely for not having taken in account the Anthropological Sciences as a whole. Topics such as the interaction between biology and culture, culture and language, the role of child rearing, the existence of a symbolic world, and what we usually call the soul, are fundamental to the undertakings of Anthropology.