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Sir Edward Burnett Tylor (2 October 1832 – 2 January 1917), was an English anthropologist. Tylor is considered representative of cultural evolutionism. In his works Primitive culture and Anthropology, he defined the context of scientific study of anthropology, based on the evolutionary theories of Charles Lyell.
He believed that there was a functional basis for the development of
society and religion, which he determined was universal. E.B. Tylor is
considered by many a founding figure of the science of social
anthropology, and his scholarly works are seen as important and lasting
contributions to the discipline of Anthropology that was beginning to
take shape in the 19th century. He believed that research into the history and prehistory of man could be used as a basis for the reform of British society. He reintroduced the term animism (the faith in the individual soul or anima of all things, and natural manifestations) into common use. He considered animism as the first phase of development of religions. E.B. Tylor was born in 1832, in Camberwell, London. He was the son of Joseph Tylor and Harriet Skipper, part of a family of financially well-off Quakers, owners of a London brass factory. He was educated at Grove House School, Tottenham,
but due to the death of Tylor's parents during his early adulthood and
his restrictive Quaker background, he never gained a university degree. After his parents’ death, he readied himself to help manage the family
business, but this plan was abruptly set aside by symptoms consistent
with the onset of tuberculosis.
Following advice to spend time in warmer climes, Tylor left England in
1855, traveling to Central America. The experience proved to be an
important and formative one, sparking in Tylor a lifelong interest in
studying unfamiliar cultures. During his travels Tylor also met Henry Christy, a fellow Quaker,
ethnologist and archaeologist. Tylor's association with Christy greatly
stimulated his awakening interest in anthropology, and helped broaden
his inquiries to include prehistoric studies. Tylor’s
first publication was a result of his 1856 trip to Mexico with Christy.
The notes Tylor took on the beliefs and practices of the people he
encountered, allowed him to publish Anahuac: Or Mexico and the Mexicans, Ancient and Modern (1861)
upon his return to England. While never traveling again Tylor continued
to study the customs and beliefs of tribal communities, both existing
and prehistoric (based on archaeological finds) and published his
second work, Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization, in 1865. Following this came his most influential work, Primitive Culture (1871). Despite continuing to work and write all the way up to the beginnings of World War I, Primitive Culture remained
the pinnacle of Tylor's career, important not only for its thorough
study of human civilization and contributions to the emergent field of
anthropology, but for its undeniable influence on a handful of young
scholars, such as J.G. Frazer, who were to become Tylor's disciples and contribute greatly to the scientific study of anthropology in later years. In 1871 Tylor was elected Fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1875 received the honorary degree of Doctor of Civil Laws from the University of Oxford. He was appointed Keeper of the University Museum at
Oxford in 1883, and, as well as serving as a lecturer, held the title
of the first “Reader in Anthropology” from 1884 - 1895. In 1896 he became
the first Professor of Anthropology at Oxford and he was knighted in
1912. Tylor’s ideology is best described in his most famous work, the two-volume Primitive Culture. The first volume, The Origins of Culture, deals with various aspects of ethnography including social evolution, linguistics, and myth. The second volume, titled Religion in Primitive Culture, deals mainly with his interpretation of animism. On the first page of Primitive Culture, Tylor provides an all-inclusive definition which is one of his most widely recognized contributions to anthropology: “Culture,
or civilization, taken in its broad, ethnographic sense, is that
complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law,
custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a
member of society.” Unlike
many of his predecessors and contemporaries, Tylor asserted that the
human mind and its capabilities are the same globally, irrespective of
a particular society’s stage in social evolution. This
essentially means that a hunter - gatherer society would possess the same
amount of intelligence as an advanced industrial society. The
difference, Tylor asserts, is education, that knowledge and methodology
that takes thousands of years to acquire. This is why Tylor often
likens primitive cultures to “children”, and why he constantly sees
culture and the mind of humans as progressive. Part of the reason he
wrote it was to refute the theory of degeneration that was popular at the time. At the end of Primitive Culture, Tylor asserts that “The science of culture is essentially a reformers' science.” Another
term ascribed to Tylor was his theory of “survivals.” Tylor asserted
that when a society evolves, certain customs are retained that are
unnecessary in the new society, like outworn and useless “baggage”. His
definition of survivals are “processes, customs, and opinions, and so
forth, which have been carried on by force of habit into a new state of
society different from that in which they had their original home, and
they thus remain as proofs and examples of an older condition of
culture out of which a newer has been evolved.” This
can include outdated practices, such as the phenomenon of European
bloodletting, which lasted long after the medical practices on which it
was based had faded from use and been replaced by more modern
techniques. Despite much criticism about his survivals (critics argued that he identified
the term but provided an insufficient reason as to why survivals actually survive), his originality in coining the term is still
acknowledged. |