Physical Anthropology.

Anthropology itself began to develop as a separate discipline in the mid-nineteenth century, as Charles Darwin’s (1809-1882) Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection (Darwin 1859) became widely accepted among scientists. Early anthropologists attempted to apply evolutionary theory within the human species, focusing on physical differences between different human sub-species or racial groups (see Eriksen 2001) and the perceived intellectual differences that followed.

The philosophical assumptions of these anthropologists were, to a great extent, the same assumptions which have been argued to underpin science itself. This is the positivism, rooted in Empiricism, which argued that knowledge could only be reached through the empirical method and statements were meaningful only if they could be empirically justified, though it should be noted that Darwin should not necessarily be termed a positivist. Science needed to be solely empirical, systematic and exploratory, logical, theoretical (and thus focused on answering questions). It needed to attempt to make predictions which are open to testing and falsification and it needed to be epistemologically optimistic (assuming that the world can be understood). Equally, positivism argues that truth-statements are value-neutral, something disputed by the postmodern school. Philosophers of Science, such as Karl Popper (1902-1994) (for example Popper 1963), have also stressed that science must be self-critical, prepared to abandon long-held models as new information arises, and thus characterized by falsification rather than verification though this point was also earlier suggested by Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) (for example Spencer 1873). Nevertheless, the philosophy of early physical anthropologists included a belief in empiricism, the fundamentals of logic and epistemological optimism. This philosophy has been criticized by anthropologists such as Risjord (2007) who has argued that it is not self-aware – because values, he claims, are always involved in science – and non-neutral scholarship can be useful in science because it forces scientists to better contemplate their ideas

Questions of the type "What is a human being?" are gaining increasing significance in the various scientific and political discourses of our time. The Nordic Network for Philosophical Anthropology will establish a constructive dialogue among different and supplementary research environments from the Nordic countries, encompassing not only philosophers and anthropologists, but also sociologists, linguists, historians, and psychologists from various traditions.

Philosophical Anthropology in this sense comprises:

· Philosophy of the human; i.e. critical reflection upon questions concerning the human being as such.

· Philosophy of anthropology; i.e. critical reflection upon methods and theories within anthropology and anthropological research.

· Anthropological philosophy; i.e. critical reflection upon the impact of anthropological approaches and their findings on philosophical conceptions of human affairs.

The special composition of the Nordic Network allows a unique collaboration between, on the one hand, philosophers with strengths in the analytical and continental traditions of philosophy, and on the other hand, anthropologists and other researchers who are interested in theoretical and methodological issues. It will thus promote a more systematic and timely approach to questions concerning the human being than have been achieved in social anthropology, analytical or continental philosophy, taken in isolation from one another.

Given the interdisciplinary structure of the Network, it will provide research training that enables Ph.D. scholars to design appropriate research projects that will meet the growing request for appropriate and profound interdisciplinary approaches. The Network will thus establish an environment that finds its focus in the question "What is the human being?" which may also be the most important question of the 21st century.

 THEME 14. Epistemology: The Theory of Knowledge