Social Anthropology and Mathematics.

Attempts to invent a new kind of

"ethnographic mathematics".

M.A.Popov
Oxford

Abstract.
Today's Social Anthropology is usually considered as social science,but not branch of natural sciences.
Probably, the first attempt to reduce cultural anthropology and ethnology into social sciences with all its
consequences on mathematical education for ethnographers was made by Stalinist government in Soviet
Russia in 1930s. However, before "Stalinist - like Great Transformation " of world anthropology of 1970 -
1980s, there was social anthropology ,based on principles of natural sciences. Founders of European
social anthropology (Malinowski, Levy - Strauss, Leach) attempted in good agreement with the spirit of
time to invent a new kind of "ethnographic mathematics " which could be refined and reshaped today for
the future "Post - Stalinist " social anthropology.

Introduction.
Founders of European social anthropology B.Malinowski ,C. Levi-Strauss and E.Leach
in 1900 - 1950s made unprecedented attempts to invent a new sort of " ethnographic
mathematics" which could be describe anthropological reality in more suitable
mathematical terms.

Bronislaw Malinowski (1881 - 1942)

Bronislaw Malinowsky used very simplified notions of functional space and
mathematical function ( having some associations with "Banach functional spaces " of
Lvow's school of functional analysis ) as metaphors in his theoretical studies.In
particular in "Argonauts" he defines Kula as some puzzling Spatial Principle or " a the
circular path on which the valuable move, the fixed direction in which each class has to
travel" (Malinowski,1922:528)
In 1939 in his classical article on the group and the individual in functional analysis,
Malinowski (2014 : 97) continues to use his "Spatial Principle" when he defines
ethnography of family, municipal unit, tribe and generally ethnography of territorial
political organizations as studies of different logical spaces combined with so-called
"differential principle". However, we must remark here that Malinowski's function was
not considered as a metaphor only, but it was really existing " Banach - like
functional object " in anthropological reality.

Claude Levi - Strauss (1908 - 2009)

Levi-Strauss also attempted to introduce some ideas of group theory,set theory and
Weil's early category mathematics in kinship theory, totemism theory and myth
theory(Morava,2003).
For instance, in his classical "Totemism " (Levi -Strauss,1963:8 ),he uses some
Algebraic Space of Permutations for totemism phenomenon in current anthropological
literature.
Hence, he formulates his method of anthropological analysis in the following form :(1)
define the phenomenon under studies as a function or relation between two or more
terms,(2) construct a table of possible permutations between these terms, and, at least
(3) take this table as a general object which can yield necessary connections"(1963:8).
Similarly in Tristes Tropiques (1955) he considers some algebraic space of all possible
permutations as working metaphor for his "Periodic Table of elementary systems " :
" The customs of a community, taken as a whole, always have a particular style and are
reducible to systems. I am of the opinion that the number of such systems is not
unlimited and that - in their games, dreams of wild imagination - human societies, like
individuals… merely choose certain combinations from an ideal repertoire that it should
be possible to define… (as) a sort of Table, like that of the chemical elements" (Levi -
Strauss,1955 :178).
Another idea by Levi - Strauss is so called " innate binary arithmetic "
(Moberg,2019:345) where some " innate binaries table" also could be connected with
some " innate algebraic space of combinations".
In his "Myth and Meaning " Levi - Strauss suggests that anthropologists have to try "to
reach the Invariant of a very complex set of codes ( the musical code,the literary
code,the aesthetic code ) or what is common to all of them"(Levi - Strauss,2001)
because,in particular, these mathematical Invariants may exist in anthropological reality
also.

Edmund Leach (1910 - 1994)

Edmund Leach claimed that " engineering background has influenced all my
anthropology.I tend to think of social systems as machines for the ordering of social
relations or as buildings that are likely to collapse of the stresses and strains of the roof
structure are not properly in balance. When I was engaged in field work I saw problem
as trying to understand " just how the system works" or " why it held together". In my
own mind these were not just metaphors,but problems of mechanical insight "
(Leach,1984:9). Leach readed mathematics and physics in Cambridge University (Clara
Coll) and,probably, he had learned to work with binary arithmetic before he had heard of
Levi - Strauss's ideas. Hence, his very personal opinion on concept of "structure" in
social anthropology : " My private use of the concept of"structure" in social anthropology
is thus different both from the usage developed by Radcliffe - Brown and Fortes and
from Levi - Strauss's which borrows from Jacobson's phonology, though my engineer's
viewpoint is much closer to the latter than to the former"(1984:10).In some sense, Leach
position is even more academically mathematical when he suggests that "my use of
"function" derived from mathematics. Consequently from my point of view there was no
inconsistency between "functionalism" and " structuralism" in pure mathematical sense,
indeed.

"Stalinist Great Transformation" of anthropology.

In April 1929 Stalinists of Soviet Russia made the first steps to reduce ethnography and
becoming social and cultural anthropology of Russia into some sort of Marxist sociology
in order to study the field's demonstrations of so - called "class principles " of Leninist -
Stalinist theory of "scientific socialism".
However, the first attempt initiated by Mr Aptekar was failed. Ethnographers -
participants of this drama ( ethnographers B.E.Petri ( killed in 1932),N.N.Koz'min (
1937), A.H.Genko (1941),P.F.Preobrajenski (1941),T.A.Kokiev (1955), F.A.Fiel'strupp
(1933),A.N.Charuzin (1932), N.I.Konrad ( Krasgulag 7 ,1938 - 1940) and 500 another
known and unknown professionals) were exterminated, even when they became
believers in feasibility of transformation.
Beeing experts in regional ethnography of Russia, they tried to find some sort of
compromise with Stalin. However, such ethnographers as Petri B.E. which is openly
declared :" I am merely naturalist by education and Darwinist by method " were wrong in
their expectations.
New transformation radically changed ethnography and social anthropology. Great
Stalinist - like transformation have reached West as well in 1970 - 1980s. And today,
social and cultural anthropologists as social scientists , following tragedy of Russian
ethnographers of 1930s, nevertheless, continue to ignore experience of naturalists,
mathematicians and experimental scientists. They enjoy disciplinary barrier between
natural and social scientists, and they became respectable political actors in the Theater
created for them by politicians.

Towards Post - Stalinist Social Anthropology.

My first two assays.
1.Whereas Edmund Leach tended to think of social systems as machines, I had found
new possibility to improve that approach. Last years computer scientists realized that all
unsolved computational problems ( NP complete problems) must have the same logical
structure. Generally speaking all NP complete problems could be reduced to different
interpretations of the same The Travelling Salesman Problem or "TSP" ( given a list of
cities and the distance between each pair of cities ,what is the shortest possible route
that visit each city and return to the original city?).
Initially TSP was found in practical economics,correspondingly ,it could be interesting to
find similar NP complete problem in the field anthropology. Indeed, as I showed in my
article" P versus NP in the field anthropology" (Popov,2009) such new class M of
complexity must exist, and, we can return in some sense to Edmund Leach I.e.we may
think about unsolved fundamental computational problems of humankind as
consequence of an existence of real "unseen" computational machines. Future "Post -
Stalinist " social anthropology can identify such sort of computational social machines
existing in economic, social and political reality of our days. Hence, new kind of
"complexity anthropology" can be performed and new unexpected ways of
anthropological thinking may be found as well.(Popov,2009)
2. My second assay is connected with anthropologically inspired a new way of thinking
in mathematics. Traditionally, some fundamental problems of very abstract number
theory were disconnected with the world of biology.However, intuitive Platonism of
founders of social anthropology may suggest that such links could be proved. Indeed,
life exists in merely one chirality - sugars are exclusively right or D - handed,whereas
amino acids are left or L - handed. Biologists still do not understand why so many
biological molecules exists in just one chirality. Following "ethnographic mathematics"
heuristics, we may predict an existence of single handed chirality in mathematics as
well ( exclusive oddness of primes, exclusive evenness of perfect numbers etc).( Popov,
2018)
Thus, hence, future anthropologist can be also inventor of a new unexpected way of
thinking even in mathematics. I tested this hypothesis in 1999 ( Popov,1999 : 29) and
now my new project "Quantum Brain Initiative 2019" with famous Pavlovian Institute of
Physiology of Russian Academy of Sciences ( St Petersburg) ( Попов,2019) also may
suggest that "old fashioned social anthropology of pre - Stalinist Age" can work really
well even in the 21st century.

REFERENCES
Levi - Strauss,C.1955 Tristes Tropiques ( Penguin Modern Classics)
Levi - Strauss,C. 2001 Myth and Meaning ( Routledge Great Minds).
Levi - Strauss,C.1963 Totemism.Beacon Press.
Leach,E. 1984 Glimpses of the unmentionable in the history of British Social
Anthropology - AnnRev Anthropology 13(1-23)
H.L.Moore and T.Sanders (eds)2014.Anthropology in theory. Issues in Epistemology.
2nd Edition. Wiley Blackwell.
Malinowski,B. 1922 (2014). Argonauts of the Western Pacific (Routledge Classics).
Morava,J. 2003. On the canonical formula of C.Levi - Strauss. - ArXiv/ Math /
0306.174v2.
Popov,M.A. 2009. P versus NP in the field anthropology - ArXiv/Computer sciences/
0904.3074
Popov,M.A. 1999. On Plato's periodic perfect numbers - Bull des Sci Mathem.123,pp
29 - 31.DOI : 10.1016/S007- 4497(99)80011-6.
Popov,M.A.2018 Fundamentalness of Homochirality - https
://www.oxford.academia.edu/MichaelPopov
Попов,М.А. 2019 И.П.Павлов и Квантовая механика - Integrative Physiology
International Conference 2019 / 26.09.2019.