Russel-Research-Method-in-Anthropology

Anthropology and the Social Sciences 11
the same time, and on the same philosophical basis, by two friends, Isaac
Newton and John Locke (1632–1704). It would not be until the 19th century
that a formal program of applying the scientific method to the study of humanity
would be proposed by Auguste Comte, Claude-Henri de Saint-Simon,
Adolphe Quételet, and John Stuart Mill (more about these folks in a bit). But
Locke understood that the rules of science applied equally to the study of
celestial bodies (what Newton was interested in) and to human behavior (what
Locke was interested in).
In his An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1996 [1690]), Locke
reasoned that since we cannot see everything and since we cannot even record
perfectly what we do see, some knowledge will be closer to the truth than will
other knowledge. Prediction of the behavior of planets might be more accurate
than prediction of human behavior, but both predictions should be based on
better and better observation, measurement, and reason (see Nisbet 1980;
Woolhouse 1996).
Voltaire, Condorcet, and Rousseau
The legacy of Descartes, Galileo, and Locke was crucial to the 18th-century
Enlightenment and to the development of social science. Voltaire (François
Marie Arouet, 1694–1778) was an outspoken proponent of Newton’s nonreligious
approach to the study of all natural phenomena, including human
behavior (Voltaire 1967 [1738]). In several essays, Voltaire introduced the idea
of a science to uncover the laws of history. This was to be a science that could
be applied to human affairs and would enlighten those who governed so that
they might govern better.
Other Enlightenment figures had quite specific ideas about the progress of
humanity. Marie Jean de Condorcet (1743–1794) described all of human history
in 10 stages, beginning with hunting and gathering, and moving up
through pastoralism, agriculture, and several stages of Western states. The
ninth stage, he reckoned, began with Descartes and ended with the French
Revolution and the founding of the republic. The last stage was the future,
reckoned as beginning with the French Revolution.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), by contrast, believed that humanity
had started out in a state of grace, characterized by equality of relations, but
that civilization, with its agriculture and commerce, had corrupted humanity
and lead to slavery, taxation, and other inequalities. Rousseau was not, however,
a raving romantic, as is sometimes supposed. He did not advocate that
modern people abandon civilization and return to hunt their food in the forests.
Rousseau held that the state embodied humanity’s efforts, through a
social contract, to control the evils brought about by civilization. In his clas-