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Home > Dictionary of Science Quotations > Scientist Names Index D > Dame Mary Douglas Quotes

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Dame Mary Douglas
(25 Mar 1921 - 16 May 2007)

English anthropologist who was one of her era’s most influential anthropologists and scholars of classification systems and institutions. In Purity and Danger (1966), she made a cross-cultural study of ritual systems of cleanliness, pollution, and taboo. She considered these did not merely establish hygienic conditions but went further to establish order with rules of behaviours; rituals bind people together.


Science Quotes by Dame Mary Douglas (3 quotes)

If we can abstract pathogenicity and hygiene from our notion of dirt, we are left with the old definition of dirt as matter out of place. This is a very suggestive approach. It implies two conditions: a set of ordered relations and a contravention of that order. Dirt then, is never a unique, isolated event.
— Dame Mary Douglas
In Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (1966), 35.
Science quotes on:  |  Abstract (141)  |  Approach (112)  |  Condition (362)  |  Definition (238)  |  Dirt (17)  |  Event (222)  |  Hygiene (13)  |  Matter (821)  |  Never (1089)  |  Notion (120)  |  Old (499)  |  Order (638)  |  Pathogen (5)  |  Set (400)  |  Two (936)  |  Unique (72)

Our ultimate task is to find interpretative procedures that will uncover each bias and discredit its claims to universality. When this is done the eighteenth century can be formally closed and a new era that has been here a long time can be officially recognised. The individual human being, stripped of his humanity, is of no use as a conceptual base from which to make a picture of human society. No human exists except steeped in the culture of his time and place. The falsely abstracted individual has been sadly misleading to Western political thought. But now we can start again at a point where major streams of thought converge, at the other end, at the making of culture. Cultural analysis sees the whole tapestry as a whole, the picture and the weaving process, before attending to the individual threads.
— Dame Mary Douglas
As co-author with Baron Isherwood, The World of Goods: Towards an Anthropology of Consumption (1979, 2002), 41-42.
Science quotes on:  |  18th Century (21)  |  Abstract (141)  |  Analysis (244)  |  Base (120)  |  Being (1276)  |  Bias (22)  |  Century (319)  |  Claim (154)  |  Closed (38)  |  Conceptual (11)  |  Converge (10)  |  Culture (157)  |  Discredit (8)  |  End (603)  |  Era (51)  |  Exist (458)  |  Find (1014)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Being (185)  |  Human Society (14)  |  Humanity (186)  |  Individual (420)  |  Interpretation (89)  |  Long (778)  |  Major (88)  |  Making (300)  |  Misleading (21)  |  New (1273)  |  Other (2233)  |  Picture (148)  |  Point (584)  |  Political (124)  |  Procedure (48)  |  Process (439)  |  Recognise (14)  |  See (1094)  |  Society (350)  |  Start (237)  |  Stream (83)  |  Strip (7)  |  Tapestry (5)  |  Task (152)  |  Thought (995)  |  Thread (36)  |  Time (1911)  |  Ultimate (152)  |  Uncover (20)  |  Universality (22)  |  Use (771)  |  Weaving (6)  |  Western (45)  |  Whole (756)  |  Will (2350)

Where there is dirt there is a system. Dirt is the by-product of a systematic ordering and classification of matter, in so far as ordering involves rejecting inappropriate elements.
— Dame Mary Douglas
In Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (1966), 35.
Science quotes on:  |  By-Product (8)  |  Classification (102)  |  Dirt (17)  |  Element (322)  |  Inappropriate (5)  |  Involve (93)  |  Matter (821)  |  Order (638)  |  Product (166)  |  Rejection (36)  |  System (545)  |  Systematic (58)


See also:
  • 25 Mar - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Douglas's birth.

Carl Sagan Thumbnail In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. (1987) -- Carl Sagan
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- 90 -
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- 70 -
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- 50 -
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Alfred Wegener
John Dalton
- 40 -
Pierre Fermat
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Thomas Kuhn
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- 30 -
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Richard Feynman
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- 10 -
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