E B Tylor

Edward Burnett Tylor (1832–1917) is often considered the father of the discipline of anthropology. Despite such eminence, his biography has never been written and the connections between his life and his work have been largely obscured or ignored. This article presents Tylor's main theories in the field of anthropology, especially as presented in his four published books, the most famous of which is Primitive Culture, and in the manuscript sources for his last, unpublished, one on ‘The natural history of religion’. One of Tylor's major areas of interest was the use of anthropological evidence to discover how religion arose. This preoccupation resulted in his influential account of ‘animism’. Drawing upon biographical information not known by previous scholars, Tylor's Quaker formation, later religious scepticism and personal life are connected to his intellectual work. Assumptions such as his evolutionary view of human culture and intellectualist approach to ‘savage’ customs, his use of the comparative method, and distinctive notions of his such as ‘survivals’ are first explained, and then the discussion is taken a step further in order to demonstrate how they were deployed to influence contemporary religious beliefs and practices. Tylor argued that the discipline of anthropology was a ‘reformer's science’. Working within the warfare model of the relationship between faith and science, I reveal the extent to which this meant for him using the tools of this new field of inquiry to bring about changes in the religious convictions of his contemporaries.

Tylor and Interpretation of Culture:

Tylor provided the macro-meaningful of culture as 'Culture or civilization is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, laws, custom and any other compabilities and habits acquired by men as a member of society. Tylor believes on unilinear concept for the study of historical process of civilization and culture, and further emphasis that it has to be accepted. In this regard he has defined cultural development process as a process of lower level to higher level heading process. The conclusion by him about the interpretation of the culture are:-

• The concept of culture includes holistic aspect.
• Human creates culture.
• Culture slowly develops simple to complex being purified.
• The process of cultural evolution always goes forward through unilinear process.

Tylor and Evolutionary Interpretation:-

 Tylor has forwarded a logic that society and culture and their evolution process goes on in  unilinear model and always forwards from simple to complex and progressive situation. He has divided the stages of evolution of civilization and culture into three levels as:-

1. Savagery Stage

2. Barbarism Stage

3. Civilization Age

The initial age of human society and culture was savagery. The society was simple and nomadic. The second stage is barber age. In this age , stable settlement, the us of mud and metal weapons has started. The latest stage is civilized age in which human uses brain and developed language, art, literature, politics etc. Tylor has mentioned the fact that the development of human civilization and culture was done in these three stages gradually from simple to complex.

Tylor and Interpretation of Religion

In the context of the interpretation of evolution Tylor has also mentioned about religion. He has mentioned the stages of the development of religion like this:-

1. Animism

2. Polytheism

3. Monotheism

Tylor has taken religion as important element in the socio-cultural aspects. In this regard he has a logic that the emergence and development process of society and culture should be analysed. Among these stages in the process of socio-cultural evolution, animism was the first stage. There was a strong belief of human beings towards animism. In the second, polytheism concept emerged among human beings and they started to worship gods and goddesses and based on these values, socio-cultural lifestyle developed. The development stage of religion development ended on monotheism. According to this, today people find a single main god of a family taken as virtual and tradition.

Strength:-

Tylor contribution is considered as:-

• The conclusion of him remained that there is greater impact of culture in the explanation of culture and human life.
• In anthropological study field work study and comparative study got the applied form which proved as the important achievement for the anthropological study.
• Emphasized on historical process of society and culture.

The contribution of him in anthropology is incomparable. He has developed a concept  by the scientific interpretation of culture that is acquired. He is able to do the interpretation of evolution of religion.

Weakness:-

In anthropology Tylor is called chair-lover anthropologist. The meaning is that he could do interpretation and analysis of the facts brought by his students. Next allegation is that he emphasized more to the secondary data rather than primary data. He did not do the interpretation of social aspect of religion and stayed on spiritualism.