Edward Burnett Tylor

• 1. A Tubercular Journey To The Americas

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  Edward Burnett Tylor was born on the 2nd of October 1832 in Camberwell, London. He grew up as part of a wealthy Quaker family that owned a brass factory in the city. His father Joseph and mother Harriet Skipper raised him within this industrial and religious community. An elder brother named Alfred Tylor would later become a geologist. Young Edward attended Grove House School in Tottenham but left at age 16 without earning a degree. This departure followed the death of his parents and his own Quaker faith which discouraged university attendance.

  The course of his life changed dramatically when he developed tuberculosis at age 23. Medical advice dictated that he spend time in warmer climes to recover from the illness. In 1855 he left England for the Americas to follow these instructions. The experience proved formative and sparked a lifelong interest in studying unfamiliar cultures. During his travels he met Henry Christy who was a fellow Quaker and an ethnologist. Christy's association with Tylor greatly stimulated his awakening interest in anthropology. It also helped broaden his inquiries to include prehistoric studies.

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• 2. Primitive Culture And The Birth Of A Discipline

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  Tylor published his first work based on his 1856 trip to Mexico with Christy. The book appeared under the title Anahuac: Or Mexico and the Mexicans, Ancient and Modern in 1861. He continued to study customs and beliefs of tribal communities both existing and prehistoric. His second major work Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization arrived in 1865. The most influential work Primitive Culture followed in 1871 as a two-volume set.

  This publication became important for its thorough study of human civilization and contributions to the emergent field of anthropology. It exerted undeniable influence on young scholars such as J. G. Frazer who were to become Tylor's disciples. On the first page of Primitive Culture Tylor provided a definition that remains one of his most widely recognized contributions. He stated culture is that complex whole which includes knowledge belief art morals law custom and any other capabilities acquired by man as a member of society. This definition established the context for the scientific study of anthropology based on evolutionary theories from Charles Lyell. His methods relied on comparative and historical ethnography.

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• 3. The Three Stages Of Social Evolution

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  Tylor maintained that all societies passed through three basic stages of development. These stages moved from savagery through barbarism to civilization. He believed there was a functional basis for the development of society and religion which he determined was universal. This view distinguished itself from another creed called diffusionism which postulated the spread of items of culture from regions of innovation. A given apparent parallelism thus had at least two explanations according to this framework. Instances could descend from an evolutionary ancestor or they might be alike because one diffused into the culture from elsewhere.

  He regarded instances of parallel ethnographic concepts and practices as indicative of laws of human thought and action. The theorist perhaps most influential on Tylor was John Lubbock 1st Baron Avebury who innovated terminology like Paleolithic and Neolithic. Lubbock was a prominent banker and British liberal Parliamentarian imbued with a passion for archaeology. Initial concepts of prehistory were his. Tylor's evolutionism considered the task of cultural anthropology to discover stages of development or evolution. Critics argued later that no universality existed in these claims and that theorists imposed models that did not really fit.

• 4. Animism As The First Phase Of Religion

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  Tylor reintroduced the term animism into common use during his lifetime. He defined it as faith in the individual soul or anima of all things and natural manifestations. He regarded animism as the first phase in the development of religions. For him animism is the true natural religion that is the essence of religion. It answers questions about which religion came first and which religion is essentially the most basic foundation of all religions. Animism is described as the belief in spirits inhabiting and animating beings or souls existing in things.

  To Tylor the fact that modern religious practitioners continue to believe in spirits showed such people were no more advanced than primitive societies. By excluding scientific explanation from their understanding of why and how things occur he asserted modern religious practitioners are rudimentary. He perceived the modern religious belief in God as a survival of primitive ignorance. However Tylor believed that atheism was not the logical end of cultural and religious development but instead a highly-minimalist form of monotheist deism. He thus posited an anthropological description of the gradual elimination of paganism and disenchantment but not secularization.

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• 5. The Persistence Of Cultural Survivals

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  A term ascribed to Tylor was his theory of survivals. His definition of survivals included outdated practices such as the European practice of bloodletting. This practice lasted long after the medical theories on which it was based had faded from use and been replaced by more modern techniques. Critics argued that he identified the term but provided an insufficient reason as to why survivals continue. Tylor's meme-like concept of survivals explains characteristics of a culture linked to earlier stages of human culture.

  Studying survivals assists ethnographers in reconstructing earlier cultural characteristics and possibly reconstructing the evolution of culture. The science of culture is essentially a reformers' science according to Tylor's writing at the end of Primitive Culture. He often likened primitive cultures to children and saw culture and the mind of humans as progressive. His work served as a refutation of the theory of social degeneration which was popular at the time. He believed research into the history and prehistory of man could be used as a basis for the reform of British society.

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• 6. Oxford Appointments And Institutional Foundations

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  Tylor was appointed Keeper of the University Museum at Oxford in 1883. As well as serving as a lecturer he held the title of the first Reader in Anthropology from 1884 to 1895. In 1896 he was appointed the first Professor of Anthropology at Oxford University. He was also closely involved in the early history of the Pitt Rivers Museum built adjacent to the University Museum. Lubbock's works featured prominently in Tylor's lectures and in the Pitt Rivers Museum subsequently.

  He acted as anthropological consultant on the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. Awards included election as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1871 and an honorary degree of Doctor of Civil Laws from the University of Oxford in 1875. An honorary membership of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society arrived in 1886. The Huxley Memorial Medal followed in 1907 and he was knighted for his contributions in 1912. A festschrift titled Anthropological Essays presented to Edward Burnett Tylor formally appeared on his 75th birthday in 1907.

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