Paper short abstract:

Missing the link: from the study of variation to the study of variability The aim of this paper is to suggest 1) thinking at natural factors as the possibilities and not only as constrains; 2) placing the anthropological explanation in the interstitial space between the psychological and sociological knowledges.

Paper long abstract:

Missing the link:

from the study of variation to the study of variability

The anthropological knowledge of the XX century was assumed as given the social and cultural condition of human beings, analizing how the human groups building and differentiate their social existence. This heuristic programm was founded in a ontological and epistemological difference between the psychological and sociological study (the former analizing the mental facts, and the last how work the societies), and anthropological study (social and cultural) of social existence of human groups.

The aim of this paper is to suggest that anthropological knowledge should recognize importance of: 1) thinking at natural factors (biological, neurophysiological) as the possibilities and not only as constrains (even if the phylogenetic limits of cultural variability are undeniable), which, together with social factors (demographic size, degree of intergroup sociality, cultural inputs, etc.), explain in a plausible way the several ways to being in the world and to reach the social and cultural condition; 2) placing the anthropological explanation in the interstitial space between the psychological and sociological knowledges, studying with people how a invidual facts (ideas, belief, practice, memory) could be shared or contrasted in a human group; 3) engaging in contemporary pubblic discussions about the great questions of social life (what it means to be a human being or person, of moral conduct and the freedom in people's relations with others, the origin and the end of life, etcetera), with more plausible anthropological explanations about the variability of human existence.