MCAT Critical Analysis and Reasoning Skills Practice Test 12

German anthropologists understood nature as a static system of categories that allowed them, in their study of "natural peoples," to grasp an unchanging essence of humanity, rather than the ephemeral changes historians recorded. However, the concept of nature was anything but stable in nineteenth-century Germany. Since the early part of the century there had been a deep tension between Kantian models of natural science and idealist Naturphilosophie, conflicts in which many anthropologists themselves were active participants. Furthermore, in nature anthropologists sought a realm free from historical change just as Darwinians began asserting that nature, like humans, did in fact change over time. The boundary between history and nature, which formed an important basis for both humanism and anthropology, came to appear more unstable than ever.…

The idea of nature and natural science that informed German anthropology was based on elements from two conflicting approaches, conventionally associated with Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Schelling. The founders of German anthropology belonged to a generation of natural scientists who, in the second half of the nineteenth century, rejected Schelling's romantic Naturphilosophie in favor of a return to Kant's more secular and rationalist notion of nature and natural science. As is the case with so many philosophical rejections, however, anthropologists preserved as much Naturphilosophie as they cast off, and their understanding of nature was really a synthesis of the two philosophers' approach.

From Kant anthropologists took an idea of nature as a static and objective system that could be conclusively known by scientists. In his Metaphysical Basis of Natural Science, Kant had maintained that an "authentic natural science" consisted exclusively of a priori deductions of necessary laws. He thus applauded a version of Newtonian mechanics based solely on mathematics as a perfect natural science and dismissed chemistry as a "systematic art" rather than a science because its laws were derived from sensory experience of "given facts." Unlike Newton, Kant excluded theological considerations from natural science, founding a tradition in Germany of strictly separating natural science and religion, a tradition sharply distinct from British natural theology. While this law-based, objective, totally secular, and perfectly knowable nature would have appealed to anthropologists, they would not have subscribed to the Kantian notion of science as the a priori deduction of mathematical laws. Indeed, anthropology was above all a science of the given facts, which Kant had rejected as a source of natural scientific knowledge.

It was precisely over this issue of the empirical that Schelling had originally broken with Kant, and it was in their empiricist approach to nature that anthropologists retained their allegiance to Schelling. Schelling had justified experience and empirical knowledge of nature against Kant's insistence that true knowledge of nature had to be deductive, a priori, and law-like. Thus, a science of qualities, such as chemistry with its qualitatively different elements, could count as a science for Schelling but not for Kant. For Schelling, the rehabilitation of the empirical in natural knowledge was part of an idealist project to overcome the difference between theological and natural knowledge, mind and nature, and speculation and experience. When anthropologists denounced Naturphilosophie, it was not for its empiricism. Worse than the idealism of Naturphilosophie was, for anthropologists, its view of nature as becoming rather than being, a view antithetical to the concept of nature that anthropologists wanted to use against historicist humanism. Thus, Virchow asserted that, "while the facts teach that the races of humans and the species of animals are immutable," Naturphilosophie (wrongly, in Virchow's view) teaches that they can change. Furthermore, anthropologists separated religious and scientific questions, following Kant's rather than Schelling's understanding of the relation of natural and theological knowledge. Allowing theology and development to enter into discussions of nature would undermine the basic project of anthropology as an antihumanist science of natural peoples outside history. When they spoke of Naturphilosophie, anthropologists thought as much about Darwinism as about the philosophical writings of Schelling and his followers.

Anthropologists saw in the science of botany a model for their own antievolutionist synthesis of Kant's systematizing with Schelling's empiricism. There were a number of botanists active in the Berlin Anthropological Society, including the latter-day Naturphilosoph, Alexander Braun. Braun argued that the study of plants allowed one to observe the essence of nature relatively directly because plants do not disguise themselves with culture, as humans do. Adolf Bastian extended Braun's understanding of plants to natural peoples, whom he compared to cryptograms, flowerless plants such as algae, mosses, and ferns. As botanists had gained general knowledge about plants by studying the flowerless cryptograms, which had previously been "despised and crushed underfoot," so too would anthropologists solve the "highest questions of culture" by considering natural peoples, who lack the "flowers of culture."

Material used in this particular passage has been adapted from the following source:

A. Zimmerman, Anthropology and Antihumanism in Imperial Germany. © 2001 by University of Chicago Press.

1. The primary purpose of the passage is most likely to:

• A. describe the analogy drawn by German anthropologists between botany and anthropology.
• B. criticize 19^th century German anthropologists for drawing inspiration from two mutually inconsistent schools of thought regarding natural science.
• C. explain the views of 19^th century German anthropologists regarding the proper approach to studying human beings in the context of natural science.
• D. describe how 19^th century German anthropology synthesized Kant's views on theology with Schelling's belief that science consists of a priori deductions of natural laws.

2. Which of the following claims, if true, would most undermine the German anthropologists' view that botany is a valid model for anthropology?

• A. Human beings inherently exist within a social context, and therefore there is no such thing as a people not influenced by culture.
• B. Some botanists believe that the study of flowerless cryptograms can tell us little about the structure and function of flowering plants.
• C. Alexander Braun abandoned Naturphilosophie early in his academic career, and therefore his ideas about botany have little in common with the views of that school of thought.
• D. It is impossible to study theology without taking into account cultural influences.

3. Which of the following statements, based on the passage, most accurately represents a relationship between the German anthropologists' views on natural science and those of Kant and Schelling?

• A. The German anthropologists accepted Kant's view that science consists of deductions from necessary laws and rejected Schelling's belief that empiricism requires combining theological and natural knowledge.
• B. The German anthropologists accepted Schelling's empiricist approach and rejected Kant's belief that science consists of deductions from mathematical laws.
• C. The German anthropologists rejected Kant's inclusion of theological considerations within natural science and accepted Schelling's belief that human beings are mutable.
• D. The German anthropologists rejected Kant's systematizing and accepted Schelling's empiricism.

4. Which of the following, based on the passage, would be most analogous to a historicist view of anthropology?

• A. A belief that physics consists of a set of unchangeable laws that govern all actions and interactions between objects.
• B. A belief that chemistry is a science rather than a systematic art, given that its laws can be discovered through empirical evidence.
• C. A belief that political science is the study of how different political systems create and shape, and are themselves shaped by, human beliefs and values over time.
• D. A belief that economics is inherently the study of how inherent and consistent human motivations play themselves out in different contexts.

5. Elsewhere, the author of the passage writes that in 19th century Germany the study of geology, within natural science, was divided into Geognosie, the study of the present-day, essential, and inherent characteristics of the earth, and Geologie, the study of how geological features evolve and come into being. Based on information in the passage, how would the German anthropologists most likely view these two fields of study?

• A. They would accept both as related and equally essential approaches to a scientific understanding of the earth.
• B. They would reject both as irrelevant to a scientific understanding of human beings.
• C. They would accept Geologie as a scientific approach to understanding the nature of the earth, while seeing Geognosie as a questionable attempt to impose rigid categories on inherently changeable features.
• D. They would see Geognosie as a more scientific approach to geology than Geologie.

6. With which of the following statements would the German anthropologists discussed in the passage be LEAST likely to agree?

• A. Culture can obscure qualities common to all humans.
• B. Nature can be described through a set of objective and unchanging categories.
• C. Chemistry cannot be legitimately labeled as a science.
• D. Newton erred in including theological considerations within natural science.

7. Which of the following statements made in the passage most directly supports the author's assertion that in nature anthropologists sought a realm free from historical change (paragraph 1)?

• A. The concept of nature was unstable in 19th century Germany.
• B. British natural theology combined religion with natural science.
• C. According to Virchow, while Naturphilosophie teaches that the races of humans and species of animals can change, they are in fact immutable.
• D. There was a tension between Kantian models of natural science and idealist Naturphilosophie.