Exam 1: What Is Anthropology

Basic understandings about the way the world works that are never questioned are called

What sets science apart from other forms of explanation is that science is

What does it mean when anthropologists claim that their discipline is holistic, comparative, and evolutionary? Provide examples for each concept.

Explain the definition for scientific theories. What is their role in the scientific process? Why are they taken seriously even when their hypotheses remain open to testing?

Develop, in your own words, a short definition of anthropology and describe its connection to the social sciences, the natural sciences, and the humanities.

Ethnographic research that focuses on human-machine hybrids that blur boundaries between nature and culture, the living and the nonliving, is known as

What subfield of anthropology emphasizes that human beings are biocultural organisms means that instinct must be recognized as an important part of any explanation of human behavior?

Following scientists as they go about their everyday laboratory activities, studying the range of embodied skills that scientists must master to operate the technological apparatuses that make successful research possible, is an example of

A series of testable hypotheses that are linked up in a coherent manner in order to explain a body of material evidence is called

What observers can see when they observe a particular part of the world with great care is/are called

Applied anthropologists often become involved in policy issues, to avoid impacting social issues.

Statements that assert a particular connection between fact and interpretations are called

The capacity of scientific hypotheses to be matched against nature to see whether the hypotheses are confirmed or refuted is called

An important multidisciplinary research program to rethink traditional assumptions about what science is and how it works began in the 1980s and is well established in the twenty-first century. This research program is called

When anthropologists study what happens when speakers of unrelated languages are forced to communicate with one another, they are studying

Social groupings that allegedly reflect biological differences are called

Since total objectivity is impossible, should people choose the theories they like best?

In the context of globalization, new theoretical developments, new research topics, and new kinds of collaboration are uniting the anthropological subfields like never before.

When university students in the United States walk into a classroom on the first day, they observe that there is a person standing in the front of the classroom with a folder open on a podium and a stack of papers on the desk. Based on their experience, they decide that this must be the instructor. One student approaches the person and asks, "Are you the instructor?" The student's question is an example of

Studying material culture is important to anthropologists because the way people deal with artifacts is shaped by the cultural meanings people attach to those artifacts.