History of anthropology

History of anthropology in this article refers primarily to the 18th- and 19th-century precursors of modern anthropology. The term anthropology itself, innovated as a New Latin scientific word during the Renaissance, has always meant "the study (or science) of man." The topics to be included and the terminology have varied historically. At present they are more elaborate than they were during the development of anthropology. For a presentation of modern social and cultural anthropology as they have developed in Britain, France, and North America since approximately 1900, see the relevant sections under Anthropology.

The term ostensibly is a produced compound of Greek ἄνθρωπος anthrōpos, "human being" (understood to mean "humankind" or "humanity"), and a supposed -λογία , "study." The compound, however, is unknown in ancient Greek or Latin, whether classical or mediaeval. It first appears sporadically in the scholarly Latin anthropologia of Renaissance France, where it spawns the French word anthropologie, transferred into English as anthropology. It does belong to a class of words produced with the -logy suffix, such as archeo-logy, bio-logy, etc., “the study (or science) of.”

The mixed character of Greek anthropos and Latin -logia marks it as New Latin. There is no independent noun, logia, however, of that meaning in classical Greek. The word λόγος (logos) has that meaning.James Hunt attempted to rescue the etymology in his first address to the Anthropological Society of London as president and founder, 1863. He did find an anthropologos from Aristotle in the standard ancient Greek Lexicon, which he says defines the word as “speaking or treating of man.” This view is entirely wishful thinking, as Liddell and Scott go on to explain the meaning: “i.e. fond of personal conversation.” If Aristotle, the very philosopher of the logos, could produce such a word without serious intent, there probably was at that time no anthropology identifiable under that name.

The lack of any ancient denotation of anthropology, however, is not an etymological problem. Liddell and Scott list 170 Greek compounds ending in –logia, enough to justify its later use as a productive suffix. The ancient Greeks often used suffixes in forming compounds that had no independent variant. The etymological dictionaries are united in attributing –logia to logos, from legein, “to collect.” The thing collected is primarily ideas, especially in speech. The American Heritage Dictionary says: “(It is one of) derivatives independently built to logos.” Its morphological type is that of an abstract noun: log-os > log-ia (a “qualitative abstract”)

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