The reaction against analogy¶
Wylie, A. (1985). The reaction against analogy. Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory.
Cited by¶
1 citation across 1 artifact.
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Primes¶
- Uniformitarianism
- Observation of current erosion, sedimentation, volcanism, and tectonic motion licenses inference about the geological past. Paleoclimatology: Modern weather processes, ice-dynamics, and ocean-circulation enable interpretation of ice-core, sediment-core, and coral-record proxies for past climate. Evolutionary biology: Observed population genetics, selection pressures, and speciation mechanisms enable inference about evolutionary history, with acknowledgment of occasional regime changes (mass extinctions). Archaeology and paleoanthropology: Current material-cultural processes and human behavior enable interpretation of artifacts and sites, with acknowledgment that some past practices have no direct modern parallel. Historical linguistics: Observed mechanisms of sound change and grammaticalization (batch 15 #312) enable reconstruction of proto-languages and language families. Financial and social sciences: Assumption that observed market and behavioral mechanisms applied in the past underlies econometric backtesting and historical social-science inference, with careful attention to regime changes (post-war economies, post-internet behaviors). Software forensics and legacy-system archaeology: Assumption that the same logging, processing, and data-handling mechanisms operated in older versions enables reconstruction of past system states, with careful attention to schema changes and architectural migrations — a transfer of the "ethnographic analogy" reasoning that Wylie (1985) analyzed in archaeology, where present-observed mechanisms cautiously license inferences about unobservable past behaviors.
This sourceAnalyzes the role and pitfalls of ethnographic analogy — using present-observed cultural mechanisms to infer past behaviors — in archaeological reasoning; shows how uniformitarian-style inference operates (and is critiqued) outside geology.
- Observation of current erosion, sedimentation, volcanism, and tectonic motion licenses inference about the geological past. Paleoclimatology: Modern weather processes, ice-dynamics, and ocean-circulation enable interpretation of ice-core, sediment-core, and coral-record proxies for past climate. Evolutionary biology: Observed population genetics, selection pressures, and speciation mechanisms enable inference about evolutionary history, with acknowledgment of occasional regime changes (mass extinctions). Archaeology and paleoanthropology: Current material-cultural processes and human behavior enable interpretation of artifacts and sites, with acknowledgment that some past practices have no direct modern parallel. Historical linguistics: Observed mechanisms of sound change and grammaticalization (batch 15 #312) enable reconstruction of proto-languages and language families. Financial and social sciences: Assumption that observed market and behavioral mechanisms applied in the past underlies econometric backtesting and historical social-science inference, with careful attention to regime changes (post-war economies, post-internet behaviors). Software forensics and legacy-system archaeology: Assumption that the same logging, processing, and data-handling mechanisms operated in older versions enables reconstruction of past system states, with careful attention to schema changes and architectural migrations — a transfer of the "ethnographic analogy" reasoning that Wylie (1985) analyzed in archaeology, where present-observed mechanisms cautiously license inferences about unobservable past behaviors.
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