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Sir Edward Burnett Tylor (2 October 1832 – 2 January 1917) was an English anthropologist, and professor of anthropology.Tylor's ideas typify 19th-century cultural evolutionism. In his works Primitive Culture (1871) and Anthropology (1881), he defined the context of the scientific study of anthropology, based on the evolutionary theories of Charles Lyell. He believed that there was a functional basis for the development of society and religion, which he determined was universal. Tylor maintained that all societies passed through three basic stages of development: from savagery, through barbarism to civilization. Tylor is a founding figure of the science of social anthropology, and his scholarly works helped to build the discipline of anthropology in the nineteenth century. He believed that "research into the history and prehistory of man [...] could be used as a basis for the reform of British society."Tylor reintroduced the term animism (faith in the individual soul or anima of all things and natural manifestations) into common use. He regarded animism as the first phase in the development of religions. Early life and education Tylor was born in 1832, in Camberwell, London, and was the son of Joseph Tylor and Harriet Skipper, part of a family of wealthy Quakers who owned a London brass factory. His elder brother, Alfred Tylor, became a geologist.He was educated at Grove House School, Tottenham, but due to his Quaker faith and the death of his parents he left school at the age of 16 without obtaining a degree. After leaving school, he prepared to help manage the family business. This plan was put aside when he developed tuberculosis at age 23. Following medical advice to spend time in warmer climes, Tylor left England in 1855, and travelled to the Americas. The experience proved to be an important and formative one, sparking his lifelong interest in studying unfamiliar cultures. During his travels, Tylor met Henry Christy, a fellow Quaker, ethnologist and archaeologist. Tylor's association with Christy greatly stimulated his awakening interest in anthropology, and helped broaden his inquiries to include prehistoric studies. Professional career Tylor's first publication was a result of his 1856 trip to Mexico with Christy. His notes on the beliefs and practices of the people he encountered were the basis of his work Anahuac: Or Mexico and the Mexicans, Ancient and Modern (1861), published after his return to England. Tylor continued to study the customs and beliefs of tribal communities, both existing and prehistoric (based on archaeological finds). He published his second work, Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization, in 1865. Following this came his most influential work, Primitive Culture (1871). This was important not only for its thorough study of human civilisation and contributions to the emergent field of anthropology, but for its undeniable influence on a handful of young scholars, such as J. G. Frazer, who were to become Tylor's disciples and contribute greatly to the scientific study of anthropology in later years. Tylor was appointed Keeper of the University Museum at Oxford in 1883, and, as well as serving as a lecturer, held the title of the first "Reader in Anthropology" from 1884 to 1895. In 1896 he was appointed the first Professor of Anthropology at Oxford University. He was also closely involved in the early history of the Pitt Rivers Museum, built adjacent to the University Museum. Tylor acted as anthropological consultant on the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary.The 1907, festschrift Anthropological Essays presented to Edward Burnett Tylor, formally presented to Tylor on his 75th birthday, contains essays by 20 anthropologists, a 15-page appreciation of Tylor's work by Andrew Lang, and a comprehensive bibliography of Tylor's publications compiled by Barbara Freire-Marreco. Thought Classification and criticisms The word evolution is forever associated in the popular mind with Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution, which professes, among other things, that man as a species developed diachronically from some ancestor among the Primates who was also ancestor to the Great Apes, as they are popularly termed, and yet this term was not a neologism of Darwin's. He took it from the cultural milieu, where it meant etymologically "unfolding" of something heterogeneous and complex from something simpler and more homogeneous. Herbert Spencer, a contemporary of Darwin, applied the term to the universe, including philosophy and what Tylor would later call culture. This view of the universe was generally termed evolutionism, while its exponents were evolutionists.In 1871 Tylor published Primitive Culture, becoming the originator of cultural anthropology. His methods were comparative and historical ethnography. He believed that a "uniformity" was manifest in culture, which was the result of "uniform action of uniform causes." He regarded his instances of parallel ethnographic concepts and practices as indicative of "laws of human thought and action." He was an evolutionist. The task of cultural anthropology therefore is to discover "stages of development or evolution." Evolutionism was distinguished from another creed, diffusionism, postulating the spread of items of culture from regions of innovation. A given apparent parallelism thus had at least two explanations: the instances descend from an evolutionary ancestor, or they are alike because one diffused into the culture from elsewhere. These two views are exactly parallel to the tree model and wave model of historical linguistics, which are instances of evolutionism and diffusionism, language features being instances of culture. Two other classifications were proposed in 1993 by Upadhyay and Pandey, Classical Evolutionary School and Neo Evolutionary School, the Classical to be divided into British, American, and German. The Classical British Evolutionary School, primarily at Oxford University, divided society into two evolutionary stages, savagery and civilization, based on the archaeology of John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury. Upadhyay and Pandey list its adherents as Robert Ranulph Marett, Henry James Sumner Maine, John Ferguson McLennan, and James George Frazer, as well as Tylor. Marett was the last man standing, dying in 1943. By the time of his death, Lubbock's archaeology had been updated. The American School, beginning with Lewis Henry Morgan, was likewise superseded, both being replaced by the Neoevolutionist School, beginning with V. Gordon Childe. It brought the archaeology up-to-date and tended to omit the intervening society names, such as savagery; for example, Neolithic is both a tool tradition and a form of society. There are some other classifications. Theorists of each classification each have their own criticisms of the Classical/Neo Evolutionary lines, which despite them remains the dominant view. Some criticisms are in brief as follows. .... Discover the Edward Burnett Tylor popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Edward Burnett Tylor books.

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  • Edward Burnett Tylor, Religion and Culture synopsis, comments

    Edward Burnett Tylor, Religion and Culture

    Graham Harvey, Liam T. Sutherland & Paul-Francois Tremlett

    Through revisiting and challenging what we think we know about the work of Edward Burnett Tylor, a founding figure of anthropology, this volume explores new connections and insight...