Response To The Study Of Anthropology

Sidny Elliott
Prof. AnnMarie Beasley, M.A.
Anthropology 300
23 September 2014
WRITTEN RESPONSE 1: ANTHROPOLOGY AND THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD What is Anthropology? Anthropology is that study of human kind as a whole, with …ology meaning “study of” and anthrop… meaning “humankind”. Anthropology also has four sub disciplines, physical/biological anthropology that studies humans as biological organisms, cultural anthropology/ethnology the study of cultural innovations and interactions, linguistics the understanding of human language its origins and use, and lastly archaeology the study of historic and prehistoric cultures through material remains left behind that give us insight to what life could have been like in those times and how the
culture has changed. The anthropological approaches to the four sub disciplines are holistic which is the assumption of interrelationships among the subjects approach, fieldwork the act of collecting primary data in natural field settings and the scientific method also known as the comparative method that is a meth logical approach of comparing data. The scientific method is a major part of anthropologists’ research and how they come across their results. The scientific method has five main steps, step one is observation: observing a situation and identifying the problem; step two is making a hypothesis: a possible explanation for the processes under study; step three is collecting data/analyzing: collecting data through observation; step four is experimentation/testing: testing the data that was collected; and finally step five the conclusion: to accept, reject, modify and repeat the hypothesis. An example of the scientific method is when Ignaz Semmelweis observed the multitude of deaths from childbirth fever after having they’re children delivered by doctors not nurses. Ignaz noticed that the doctors did not wash their hands after doing autopsies before going to the delivery room. So Ignaz confronted the doctors on staff and made them wash their hands, which in turn made the deaths from childbirth fever, reduce drastically. The dirt and diseases that the doctor carried around on their hands transmitted to the women during childbirth resulting in they’re deaths. Death was literally on the doctors’ hands. Robert M. Sapolsky ultimate goal in his studies of baboons is to see how stress affects the brain and body of the baboon and how it is related to the affects in humans. Sapolsky picked baboons to study because they live in large social groups with almost no predators and was not endangered like Sapolsky’s beloved mountain gorillas. “But in college, some of my research interested shifted and I became focused on scientific questions that could not be answered with gorillas. I would need to study a species that lived out in the open in the grasslands, with a different types of social organizations, a species that was not endangered. Savanna baboons, who had struck no particular chord in me before, became the logical species to study. You make compromises in life; not every kid can grow up to become president or a baseball star or a mountain gorilla. So I made plans to join the baboon troop.” In “A Primate’s Memoir” Sapolsky runs experiments on the male baboons by tranquilizing them in their behind with a blow gun, then taking them to a safe place to take a blood sample, dental cast and palm print. After Sapolsky has the data he needs from the subject, he takes the baboon back to the edge of the troop where he will be safe till the tranquilizer wears off. Sapolsky only takes samples from the male baboons because the females are always either mating, pregnant, or nursing, which would all have different stress readings and would be unsafe for the unborn and born infant. The classification of the type of fieldwork Sapolsky is doing is called natural experiment. A natural experiment is when the fieldwork is only partly controlled and not done in a lab. This is important because in a lab or controlled setting the baboons would not act as they would in their natural environment and stress levels, other behaviors and emotions would be different and/or nonexistent. Some of the personal challenges Robert Sapolsky face while doing his research in the African Savannas was not being a great writer.
During an interview with Greg Ross, Sapolsky was asked how he developed the urge and ability to write for a audience, and his response was, “I think the key thing was my starting to do fieldwork in Africa. For about a dozen years, I 'd spend three, four months a year fairly isolated in a tent, out in a national park. Do that regularly and you get desperately dependent on mail from anyone, and thus you send out letters to every person you 've ever met in your life, in the hopes of someone writing back. I think that 's where writing started to get in my blood.” Ross also asked Sapolsky, “Is it hard to make the transition from living with baboon populations in Africa to working in a lab in Palo Alto? Are you able to spend much time doing fieldwork now?” and Sapolsky’s response was, “Less and less—I have young kids, who aren 't old enough yet to go out into the field (soon!), so I 've drastically cut back on fieldwork time. The transitions are actually simple by now—I 've been doing it for 28 years. There was a period during grad school in New York where I 'd spend a Friday morning with the baboons, break camp in the afternoon, drive to Nairobi, get a Saturday morning plane flight and, thanks to time differences, be on a subway in Manhattan by Sunday morning, doing the first hormone assays on baboon samples that afternoon. No problem. Then, naturally, about a week later I 'd disintegrate into sleeplessness and culture
shock.” In conclusion Robert Sapolsky has over come multiply challenges and observed amazing research. Sapolsky is a great anthropologist.

Work Cited:
Sapolsky, Robert. A Primate 's Memoir. Touchstone, 2002. 304. Print.
Chapter 1, page 14;
Ross, Greg. "An Interview with Robert Sapolsky." Print. http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/robert-m-sapolsky