Method

Edward Burnett Tylor

Overview

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.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

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1. The trembling of fear is supposed by Mantegazza to be for the sake of warming the blood (!). The reddening of the face and neck is called by Wundt a compensatory arrangement for relieving the brain of the blood-pressure which the simultaneous excitement of the heart brings with it. The effusion of tears is explained both by this author and by Darwin to be a blood-withdrawing agency of a similar sort. The contraction…

   William James, Psychology

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2. Following upon these local gods came other gods, representing the guardian powers of a tribe, a vocation, or some other social group. At the third stage of development, the 'particular god' acquired a personal nature, and thus finally became a god proper. The gods of this final stage are called by Usener 'personal gods.'

   Wilhelm Max Wundt, Elements of Folk Psychology Outline of a Psychological History of the Development of Mankind

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3. Now these uniformities of organic structure which are so early perceived, are of exactly the same class as those more numerous ones later established by biology. The constant coexistence of mammary glands with two occipital condyles in the skull, of vertebræ with teeth lodged in sockets, of frontal horns with the habit of rumination, are generalizations as purely empirical as those known to the aboriginal hunter.

   Herbert Spencer, First Principles

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Philosophers who discussed Edward Burnett Tylor

• Mircea Eliade

Related ideas

• Animism
• Andrew Lang
• Atheism
• Neologism
• London
• Prehistory
• Monotheism
• Nature
• Sir
• Oxford English Dictionary
• Paganism
• Herbert Spencer
• Soul
• Americas
• University of Oxford
• Secularization
• Anthropologist
• Disenchantment
• Quakers
• Cultural anthropology
• Anthropology
• Civilization
• Charles Darwin
• Deism

Place in the tradition

Part of Animism.

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