Studying Human Origins: Disciplinary History and Epistemology (review)

Studying Human Origins: Disciplinary History and Epistemology. Edited by Raymond Corbey and Wil Roebroeks (Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press, 2001) 174 pp. $39.00

This handsomely produced volume is a welcome relief from the recent slew of books with similar main titles. Instead of rounding up the usual suspects to rehash the sparse, though expanding, base of information on human emergence, Corbey and Roebroeks have chosen to ask their contributors to look at how we approach (and have approached) the question of our own origins: As its subtitle suggests, this is a book about history and epistemology (a recurrent word throughout) rather than ontology.

There are more philosophies in paleoanthropology than are dreamt of in most sciences, but Corbey and Roebroeks have come reasonably close to covering the waterfront with an eclectic group of authors who boast varyingly close ties to the practical study of human origins. All of the contributors, though, are known for their philosophical and—dare one say it?—sometimes curmudgeonly bents. Peter Bowler, a historian, begins the book with a general disparagement of histories of science as written by working scientists, or even by those trained in science. Interestingly Bert Theunissen, the other professional historian among the authors, takes a similar tack. This partisan view is, happily, vigorously contradicted by most of the other contributions, which are mainly history as written by individuals with backgrounds in evolutionary morphology (Matt Cartmill, and to some extend Richard Delisle), and archaeology (Roebroeks, Wiktor Stoczkowski, Tim Murray, Robin Dennell, David Van Reybrouck, and Geoffrey Clark). Herman de Regt, a philosopher of science, and Corbey, whose interests lie in the boundary between history and philosophy in anthropology, complete the balance of the book.

Two contributions (in addition to the editors' percipient introduction) seem to stand out. Cartmill's point that the difference between "animalness" and "humanness" reduces to a moral, rather than a scientific, issue is well-taken, with the caveat that budding scientists traditionally receive their degrees in the sciences, or "natural philosophy," whereas philosophers receive theirs in the arts or humanities—the "moral sciences." Dennell's contribution is more in the nature of hands-on history, a provocative and insightful review of attitudes toward the human fossil record in the period between 1937 and 1960.

The book has something to engage or infuriate everyone. Once in a while, it is salutary to step back a bit and engage in the exercises of its contributors, even those that skate on the edge of our well-known tendency to narcissism when it comes to our own species Homo sapiens. Anyone with an interest in how our egotistical species studies itself would do well to browse this book.