Cultural Relativism, Physical Anthropology, and Religion
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2514466 |
|---|---|
| Authors | William C Shepherd (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1980 |
| Volume | 19 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 159 |
| Publication date | 1980-06-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-8294 • E-ISSN: 1468-5906 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/1386250 |
| OpenAlex | W2331264562 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 7 |
The most powerful way to move beyond the intellectual bankruptcy contributed to the social scientific study of religion by cultural relativism is to defend a version of innate ideas embedded in a biogenetic account of how religion and culture evolved in tandem with physical changes in the hominid genotype going back at least to australopithecine adjustments during the late Pleistocene. Modern man's phylogenetic inheritance provides one key to explaining the persistence of religious behaviors in circumstances radically different from those to which they were originally a response. The other indispensible key for understanding our perduring religious predisposition concerns the unique ontogenetic lot of Homo sapiens. Welding these two angles of vision together allows us to take cultural diversity with full seriousness without having to mince on the importance of panculturally applicable scientific principles
Biological anthropology · Cultural anthropology · Cultural relativism · Epistemology · Human rights · Political science · Relativism · Sociology · Anthropology · Cross-Cultural and Social Analysis · Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation · Law · Philosophy · Psychedelics and Drug Studies
| Citations per year | 0.09 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2015 - 2015 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |