Science, according to “Incredible Anthropology”, is a process for discovering a reliable way to understand the natural world around us. In other words, science is a method that humans use to discover how the world works. There are four main characteristics of science are testable, falsifiable, replicable, and open to revision. The first characteristic is testable; science must be able to test to make sure that the theory is correct. The second characteristic is falsifiable; science must be able to prove a theory is incorrect. The third characteristic is replicable; theories in science must be able to retest the experiments to get similar results. The last characteristic is open to revision; if a theory proven wrong, science must be …show more content…
The main point of the article is that petroglyphs were created by drug-induced shamans. Example number 1 is an example of the “authority” error. The author showed a character that he rendered to Professor Yoshida and the professor said, “it was kanji for king”. The author accepted Professor Yoshida’s explanation and did not ask anyone else. Example number 2 is an overall example of the “repetition” error because the author described that shamans used Datura stramonium, also known as jimson weed, to help them see spirits of the gods. He assumed that was what all of the shamans saw, not considering individual effect of shamans on the narcotics. Example number 3 is an example of the “uncritical empiricism” error. In the article, the author created a story using the petroglyphs. The story might not be correct because the author’s point of view is different compared to the indigenous people. Last but not least, example number 4 is an example of the “overgeneralization” error. In the article, it said, “Their consciousness was further altered by mild narcotics administered by the shaman to achieve the desired receptivity.” The author assumed that the shamans give narcotics to their tribes to help them see the hallucinations that the shamans saw. This might not be true because we do not know what the tribes did back then, since there are not a lot of written records about their daily lives, beside the petroglyphs and the