Abstract: This paper argues for the need to rethink the meaning of holism in anthropological tradition in the contemporary context in which unity of knowledge, or consilience of knowledge has been hotly debated in Korean academic world. Especially, the translation of Wilson`s Consilience triggered various responses from Korean scholars in humanities and social sciences to his proposal of unification of scientific knowledge. In this paper, I focus on Korean cultural anthropologists` criticisms on Wilson`s biological reductionism which they sensed in his sociobiological framework. Though I agree, to some extent, with their criticisms, I rather try to re-criticize their arguments because it seems to me that their perspective maintains the western, modernist dualism which posits a clear distinction between nature and culture, mind and body, spiritual and material, human and nonhuman. This leads me to re-evaluate the anthropological notion of holism, which I find has become identified with cultural holism that excludes nature and body from its theoretical model. I propose that anthropologists need to reconfigure or expand their holistic approach which fully incorporates the interactions and interdependency between nature and culture, mind and body in opposition to Cartesian dualism. I review some notable theoretical attempts in this direction, such as Bateson`s cybernetic epistemology, Maturana`s autopoiesis in biology, Lovelock`s Gaia, Haraway`s cyborg, Latour`s Actor-Network Theory, Rapapport`s human ecology. I argue that recent Post-Newtonian scientific revolution has provided anthropologists with opportunity to collaborate with natural scientists who have distanced themselves from a Newtonian mechanistic model of nature. Considering that we are living in the age of cyborg and global ecological crisis, I stress that anthropologists should pay more attention to the anthropology of science and technology and ecological anthropology to deal with contemporary global issues. Reconfiguration of anthropological holism, or consilience of knowledge among humanities, social sciences and natural science seems to me a matter most relevant to the contemporary development of academic world and global conditions.
Publication Year: 2012
Publication Date: 2012-07-01
Language: en
Type: article
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