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Eric Lawrence Gans | |
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.jpg) Eric Gans at the Tokyo 2012 Generative Anthropology Society & Conference | |
| Born | August 21, 1941 |
| Education | Bronx High School of Science (1957) Columbia College (BA, 1960) Johns Hopkins University (MA, 1961) Johns Hopkins University (PhD, 1966) |
| Notable work | The Origin of Language: A Formal Theory of Representation (1981) |
| Awards | Phi Beta Kappa (junior year) Woodrow Wilson fellow (1960-61) Prix de la langue française (1977) Chevalier des Palmes Académiques (1982) |
| Institutions | SUNY at Fredonia (1965-67) Indiana University (1967-69) UCLA (1969-) Johns Hopkins University (1978) |
| Thesis | The Discovery of Illusion: Flaubert's Early Works, 1835-1837 (1966) |
Main interests | Generative anthropology Literary theory 19th-century French literature |
Notable ideas | The originary hypothesis Generative anthropology |
| Website | Chronicles of Love and Resentment |
Eric Lawrence Gans (born August 21, 1941) is an American philosophical anthropologist and literary theorist. Gans established a human science called generative anthropology (GA), which is based on the hypothesis that representation, language—insofar as it is the most fundamental form of representation[1]—and the human species—insofar as it is defined against other animal species by its unique possession of language—could only have originated in an event, and which explains culture—insofar as it constitutes systems of representations[2]—as the "generative"[3] development of this event.
Gans claims that GA serves as a better foundation for the human sciences than the alternatives of (a) the natural sciences[4] and (b) religion as it:
- (a) actually explains the origin of language unlike the natural sciences, which, by "explaining" it in terms of human language gradually emerging from non-human animal sign systems—ultimately in an attempt to ignore the uniqueness of human language—do not actually explain it at all;[5] and
- (b) nevertheless remains consistent with the natural sciences unlike religion, which, despite actually explaining the origin of language, makes recourse to the supernatural in its explanations.[6]
Gans edits Anthropoetics: The Journal of Generative Anthropology, an academic journal devoted to GA. He also publishes the Chronicles of Love and Resentment, a weblog dedicated to his reflections on a range of topics including popular culture, film, contemporary politics, philosophy and religion.
Gans has taught and published on 19th century literature, literary theory and film in the UCLA Department of French and Francophone studies.
- ^ Eric Gans, The Origin of Language: A Formal Theory of Representation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), 29-31.
- ^ Gans, The Origin of Language: A Formal Theory of Representation, 4.
- ^ Per Gans the word "generative" here should not be understood in the sense of Noam Chomsky's generative grammar but in that of the French word génétique i.e., pertaining to genesis and generation. See Eric Gans, "Learning from Chomsky," Chronicles of Love and Resentment, January 9, 2016, https://anthropoetics.ucla.edu/views/vw504/.
- ^ Per Gans this includes the social sciences, which ultimately adopt empirical methodologies in emulation of the natural sciences. See Gans, The Origin of Language: A Formal Theory of Representation, 4-5.
- ^ Eric Gans, Science and Faith: The Anthropology of Revelation (Savage, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1990), 2, 7-9, 21.
- ^ Gans, Science and Faith: The Anthropology of Revelation, 13, 21.