Kilborn, B. Anthropology and Human Imagination (Translation by Starovoitov, V. V.)

Abstract: This is the translation of B. Kilborn’s article ‘Anthropology and human imagination’. Kilborn’s article is devoted to the history of anthropology that had been thought to be the natural science for quite a long time. Kilborn establishes that anthropology will never be anything else but humanities just like other social studies. The subject matter of anthropology is the humankind and experts in anthropology are humans, too. Kilborn stresses out the important role of human imagination in social and anthropological researches. In this regard he analyzes Giambattista Vico’s work ‘On the Grounds of New Science about the Common Nature of Nations’ where Vico explained the fundamental difference between, on one hand, knowing and understanding and, on the other hand, knowledge and science. This is nothing else but the radical epistemological gap between natural sciences, on one hand, and social studies and humanities, on the other hand. This is the gap the history of anthropology of the XX century tried to overcome.

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