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From page 349... ... Nonetheless Washburn played a unique and manifestly invaluable role in the refashioning -- even restructuring -- of human evolutionary studies as they emerged, diversified, and ultimately flourished in the later twentieth century. Sherwood Larned Washburn (always known as "Sherry") Read the entire page →
From page 350... ... 350 B I O G R A P H I C A L M E M O I R S bridge, Massachusetts. His father, a minister and one-time professor of church history, was dean of the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge. Read the entire page →
From page 351... ... S H E R W O O D L A R N E D W A S H B U R N 351 terest in its breadth of scope and scientific relevance for the human condition. He never looked back thereafter. Read the entire page →
From page 352... ... 352 B I O G R A P H I C A L M E M O I R S naturalistic behavior, was followed by several months of further collection in Sabah in eastern Malaysia devoted to collection of diverse colobine monkey species, several macaque species, and even a few orangutans. Here was a splendid opportunity to acquire from freshly obtained material firsthand experience of structure and morphology within and between lesser and greater apes and both arboreal and more terrestrial cercopithecoid monkeys. Read the entire page →
From page 353... ... In 1946 under the auspices of Columbia University's summer school and with the underwriting of the Viking Fund (to become the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research in 1951) and the strong support of its director of research, the first of a succession of summer seminars in physical anthropology were held in New York City. Read the entire page →
From page 354... ... The need for an intensive investigation of a specific problem chosen for study was frequently brought out as probably more fruitful than the approach through surveys of the physical characteristics of the people of this or that geographic region. Although historically all sciences, physical anthropology included, had begun with description and then proceeded to analysis, the opinion was advanced and supported that it would now be better first to analyze problems, to define what was being looked for and why, and then to organize the technical procedures to the closer understanding of what is to be analyzed -- moving from this to those larger, more inclusive and more meaningful descriptions which can best be done when the analytic work has been completed. Read the entire page →
From page 355... ... , he sought among the association membership repeatedly, and failingly, to change its title to Human Evolution; ultimately two other serials were to bear that name.) Facilities of a laboratory nature were scarcely even minimal at Chicago; nonetheless laboratory-oriented work was pursued and doctoral dissertations on cranial growth and development, aspects of cranial bone structure and adaptation, on chimpanzee growth, on brachiation and its adaptive correlates, among others, were forthcoming. Read the entire page →
From page 356... ... and another a year previously at the New York Academy of Sciences ("The New Physical Anthropology") Washburn sought to set the course for the ultimate emergence of a full-fledged program of human evolutionary studies. Read the entire page →
From page 357... ... Washburn gained an appreciation of diet, feeding behavior, sleeping practices, predator avoidance, social structure, dominance, and local environmental adaptation such that the hook was already well set for his near future shift toward concerns with the social behavior of primates in natural habitats, as an especially important comparative, if analogical, window into events in human evolution. He was able to pursue this perspective further in the course of two multidisciplinary symposium gatherings in 1955 and 1956, which eventuated in the volume Behavior and Evolution (1958) Read the entire page →
From page 358... ... At Chicago Washburn had elaborated his perspectives on a concern with human evolutionary studies within the emerging concepts of a modern evolutionary synthesis. A major yearlong survey course there involved joint teaching across the range of biological, prehistoric, and archeological aspects of the human evolutionary career. Read the entire page →
From page 359... ... departmental framework was the opportunity to confront a larger, and undergraduate, body of over a thousand in the course structure of a year, in a course of one's own design, offer a few chosen graduate seminars or labs as wont, and to seek to expand and refine the scope of primate and human evolutionary studies within a very much larger university context. A live-animal facility suitable for the maintenance and observation of primates was also developed jointly with a member of the department of psychology. Read the entire page →
From page 360... ... Coon (1904-81) , which presented an ill-conceived and poorly founded perspective on human evolutionary processes, events, and trajectories. Read the entire page →
From page 361... ... Its impact on anthropology, ethology, and primatology was timely and momentous. Similarly Washburn played an important role in a wide-ranging study dedicated to The Teaching of Anthropology (published 1963) Read the entire page →
From page 362... ... We met momentarily when he first visited the University of Chicago in the spring of 1947 before his acceptance of a faculty position in anthropology later that same year. I was a newcomer to college after naval service in World War II and was infused with a renewed hope to study biological anthropology as a profession with a focus on the study of human evolution. Read the entire page →
From page 363... ... . Washburn made a lasting and singularly important impact on biological anthropology throughout his career. Read the entire page →
From page 364... ... , considered that transformations attendant on redirections toward "new physical anthropology" resulted in a "true paradigm shift within the discipline." Washburn was ultimately to direct his (and others') attention to many other concerns, including naturalistic behavior of primates, cultural learning through education, citizenship, values, and society, all espoused in an evolutionary framework, and as well early on the value and implications of work in molecular genetics. Read the entire page →
From page 365... ... L Zihlman (American Journal of Physical Anthropology 116:181-83, 2001) Read the entire page →
From page 366... ... Evolution of a Teacher" in Annual Review of Anthropology (12:1-24, 1983) , and "An Interview with Sherwood Washburn" by Irven DeVore (Current Anthropology 33(4) Read the entire page →
From page 367... ... Evolutionary importance of the South African "man-apes." Nature 167:650-51. The new physical anthropology. Read the entire page →
From page 368... ... Behavior and human evolution. Reprinted in The New Physical An thropology: Science, Humanism, and Critical Reflection, eds. Read the entire page →
From page 369... ... 1972 Human evolution. In Evolutionary Biology, vol. Read the entire page →
From page 370... ... Daedalus 35:25-39. 1985 Human evolution after Raymond Dart: Twenty-third Raymond Dart Lecture delivered January 28, 1985. Read the entire page →

From page 349...

... Nonetheless Washburn played a unique and manifestly invaluable role in the refashioning -- even restructuring -- of human evolutionary studies as they emerged, diversified, and ultimately flourished in the later twentieth century. Sherwood Larned Washburn (always known as "Sherry")