Key Philosophical and Anthropological Terms
Philosophical Concepts
Accidental Property: A quality that completes or perfects an object or being but is not essential.
Anthropocentrism: The doctrine that positions human beings at the center of philosophical reflection.
Anthropologic Dualism: A philosophical doctrine that claims that human beings are made up of two realities: body and mind.
Anthropomorphism: The attribution of human characteristics and properties to non-human entities.
Arche: According to the first Ancient Greek Philosophers, the substance that originated everything in nature.
Argumentation: An oral or written exposition in which reasons are given to defend a particular thesis.
Body: In humans, the visible, material entity that they have, as distinguished from mind or soul.
Character: Behavior that is the result of habits.
Cognitive Faculty: Humankind’s natural ability to develop knowledge.
Consciousness: Mental activity that enables humans to be aware of their existence.
Epistemological Relativism: A philosophical doctrine that denies the existence of a unique, universally valid truth.
Epistemology: The philosophical study of knowledge.
Essence: The set of fundamental properties of a being.
Emergentism: Philosophical doctrine that declares that the mind emerges as a result of brain activity.
Scientific and Cosmological Concepts
Big Bang Theory: A cosmological theory stating that the universe began at a particular point in time and has been constantly expanding since then.
Bipedalism: An anatomical change in some hominids by which they stopped using four limbs to walk and began walking upright, using two legs.
Butterfly Effect: The concept that a small change in an initial scenario may lead to alterations that cannot be predicted or calculated.
Causal Law: A scientific law that establishes the relationship between cause and effect.
Cause: An event or action capable of producing another different event, which is referred to as the effect.
Chance: An event that occurs randomly.
Chaos: A state of disorder previous to cosmos.
Condensation: A physical process proposed by Anaximenes, which explains why air can be transformed into other denser natural realities such as clouds and water.
Cosmology: The discipline that studies the universe.
Entropy: In any given system, a physical quantity that measures the amount of thermal energy that cannot be transformed into mechanical energy.
Anthropological and Cultural Concepts
Acculturation: The process by which members of a culture incorporate the features of a different culture.
Creationism: A religious belief that claims that God created all biological species.
Cultural Anthropology (Social Anthropology): The branch of anthropology that aims to understand human beings from a social and cultural perspective.
Cultural Relativism: An anthropological doctrine that denies the existence of universal cultural values.
Cultural Universal: A feature present in all human cultures worldwide.
Culture: A complex group of products resulting from human activity that occur within a particular society.
Death: The loss of all characteristics of living.
Emic Description: A description of a cultural fact from the point of view of a member belonging to the culture itself. This description has to be made by an anthropologist.
Emotional Competence: A group of acquired habits, related to emotional intelligence, that generate a person’s ability to perform a professional task efficiently.
Emotional Intelligence: The ability to interact in a social context by expressing our own emotions in a balanced way and correctly interpreting the emotions of others.