Aristotle, “the father of them that know,” as Dante called him, is credited with having coined the word “anthropologist”; but he did not employ it in a very complimentary sense. Describing a lofty-minded man in his Ethics, he terms him ουκ ανθρωπολογος—not a gossip, not a talker about himself. But the word does not seem to have supplied a permanent want in the Greek world, and we meet it next in a...
Alfred C. Haddon - History of anthropology
History of anthropology
Alfred C. Haddon, A. Hingston Quiggin
107
Description
Aristotle, “the father of them that know,” as Dante called him, is credited with having coined the word “anthropologist”; but he did not employ it in a very complimentary sense. Describing a lofty-minded man in his Ethics, he terms him ουκ ανθρωπολογος—not a gossip, not a talker about himself. But the word does not seem to have supplied a permanent want in the Greek world, and we meet it next in a Latin form in the sixteenth century. Anthropologium was then used in a restricted sense, relating to man’s bodily structure; and the first work in which it occurs is generally stated to be Magnus Hundt’s Anthropologium de hominis dignitate, which appeared in 1501, and dealt in a general way with human anatomy and physiology.