Anth Science debate continues.

Reactions to the changes within the American Anthropology Association continue to accumulate — people outside the discipline are starting to notice.

For example, at PsychologyToday.com Alice Dreger refers to parallels between this split within the AAA and a decades-old split within the American Psychology Association (APA), when the more scientifically-oriented members left to form the American Psychological Society (now the Association for Psychological Science).

I’d also note the formation of the International Association for the Cognitive Science of Religion (IACSR) from the ranks of American Academy of Religion members.  Like the Anth Science section within the AAA, participants within the IACSR seem to be more enthusiastic, more fraternal, and increasingly uninterested in what’s going on in the ‘mainstream’.

Plus, don’t forget that a 1900 split within the APA produced the American Philosophical Association . . .

On the one hand, as an anthropologist who studies academia, I should be excited by the opportunity to observe the possible calving of two new disciplines.  But on the other, I can’t help but mourn what appears to be the end of two century-long experiments in interdisciplinarity.

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