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Home > Dictionary of Science Quotations > Scientist Names Index T > Sir Edward Burnett Tylor Quotes

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Sir Edward Burnett Tylor
(2 Oct 1832 - 2 Jan 1917)

English anthropologist.


Science Quotes by Sir Edward Burnett Tylor (2 quotes)

A first step in the study of civilization is to dissect it into details, and to classify these in their proper groups. Thus, in examining weapons, they are to be classed under spear, club, sling, bow and arrow, and so forth; among textile arts are to be ranged matting, netting, and several grades of making and weaving threads; myths are divided under such headings as myths of sunrise and sunset, eclipse-myths, earthquake-myths, local myths which account for the names of places by some fanciful tale, eponymic myths which account for the parentage of a tribe by turning its name into the name of an imaginary ancestor; under rites and ceremonies occur such practices as the various kinds of sacrifice to the ghosts of the dead and to other spiritual beings, the turning to the east in worship, the purification of ceremonial or moral uncleanness by means of water or fire. Such are a few miscellaneous examples from a list of hundreds … To the ethnographer, the bow and arrow is the species, the habit of flattening children’s skulls is a species, the practice of reckoning numbers by tens is a species. The geographical distribution of these things, and their transmission from region to region, have to be studied as the naturalist studies the geography of his botanical and zoological species.
— Sir Edward Burnett Tylor
In Primitive Culture (1871), Vol. 1, 7.
Science quotes on:  |  Account (195)  |  Ancestor (63)  |  Arrow (22)  |  Art (680)  |  Being (1276)  |  Botany (63)  |  Bow (15)  |  Ceremony (6)  |  Child (333)  |  Children (201)  |  Civilization (220)  |  Class (168)  |  Classification (102)  |  Club (8)  |  Death (406)  |  Detail (150)  |  Distribution (51)  |  Divided (50)  |  Earthquake (37)  |  Eclipse (25)  |  Fanciful (6)  |  Fire (203)  |  First (1302)  |  Geography (39)  |  Ghost (36)  |  Habit (174)  |  Hundred (240)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Kind (564)  |  Making (300)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Moral (203)  |  Myth (58)  |  Name (359)  |  Naturalist (79)  |  Number (710)  |  Occur (151)  |  Other (2233)  |  Parent (80)  |  Practice (212)  |  Proper (150)  |  Purification (10)  |  Reckoning (19)  |  Rite (3)  |  Sacrifice (58)  |  Skull (5)  |  Sling (4)  |  Spear (8)  |  Species (435)  |  Spiritual (94)  |  Step (234)  |  Study (701)  |  Sunrise (14)  |  Sunset (27)  |  Tale (17)  |  Textile (2)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Thread (36)  |  Transmission (34)  |  Tribe (26)  |  Various (205)  |  Water (503)  |  Weapon (98)  |  Weapons (57)  |  Weaving (6)  |  Worship (32)  |  Zoological (5)

The thesis which I venture to sustain, within limits, is simply this, that the savage state in some measure represents an early condition of mankind, out of which the higher culture has gradually been developed or evolved, by processes still in regular operation as of old, the result showing that, on the whole, progress has far prevailed over relapse.
— Sir Edward Burnett Tylor
In Primitive Culture (1871), Vol. 1, 28.
Science quotes on:  |  Condition (362)  |  Culture (157)  |  Develop (278)  |  Development (441)  |  Early (196)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Gradually (102)  |  Limit (294)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Measure (241)  |  Old (499)  |  Operation (221)  |  Prevail (47)  |  Process (439)  |  Progress (492)  |  Regular (48)  |  Relapse (5)  |  Represent (157)  |  Result (700)  |  Savage (33)  |  State (505)  |  Still (614)  |  Sustain (52)  |  Thesis (17)  |  Venture (19)  |  Whole (756)


See also:
  • 2 Oct - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Tylor's birth.
  • Primitive culture: Researches ..., by Edward Burnett Tylor. - book suggestion.

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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