Horizon

"Ossa Ips!" -- innit?

Not really a surprise. People go into anthropology with the idea of respect for cultures other than their own; they get tied up in knots over the basic arrogance of observing and reporting on people unlike themselves; they don't want to catch tropical diseases anyway; so what better than to take refuge in desk-bound opacity and creation myths, especially if it's possible to jam Freud and the Book of Genesis together into a single idea and take credit for the result?

Or am I missing something profound here?

Freud and the Book of Genesis

Which are equally scientific, rational, and theoretically valid.

Or am I missing something profound here?

It's a safe bet that you aren't. I find this sort of thing rather disgusting. It makes me want to drop out of the college application process and become a grocery clerk.

Was reading Marc Bloch last night and came across a nice quote, something to the effect of: When we have managed to convince people that the validity of a science (by which he meant history) lies in making refutation easy, a great victory will have been struck for rationality. That's a relatively close paraphrase. And this opaque and totally unnecessary language so popular in the continental style is nothing more than a cowardly attempt to make refutation by the uninitiated nigh impossible. If someone actually takes the time to do it, you can claim that they misread you.