Image of two dinosaur models

Photo by Viktor Talashuk on Unsplash

Hubble Space Telescope image of the Orion Nebula

Orion Nebula • ESA/Hubble

Image of a collection of clocks

Photo by Lucian Alexe on Unsplash

Image of bone marrow being drawn from a patient

Bone marrow being drawn from a donor • US Navy photo (Public Domain)

Painting of demon sitting on sleeping woman

The Nightmare (1781) by John Henry Fuseli

Image of laughing child

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

Image of two tree swallows flying near a nesting box

Photo by Jongsun Lee on Unsplash

Image of a large nuclear bomb

A USAF nuclear bomb • Image by Chairboy (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Image of scientists standing beside large particle accelerator

Particle accelerator at CERN • Photo by x70tjw (CC BY-SA 2.0)

The physicists’ naughty bits

The gold­en age of anthro­pol­o­gy is past. The time is gone when a Gre­go­ry Bate­son or Mar­garet Mead could go off to New Guinea or Samoa and find soci­eties rel­a­tive­ly untouched by West­ern civ­i­liza­tion. An anthro­pol­o­gist today is hard pressed to find a cul­ture any­where on earth that retains its orig­i­nal tra­di­tions and val­ues. One is as like­ly to find Coca-Cola and satel­lite tele­vi­sion in the wilds of New Guinea as in New Jersey.

Image of large pile of coal

Photo by Nick Nice on Unsplash