This article investigates two questions: have literary anthropologists
offered telling critiques of science; and have they proposed another,
more powerful, mode of knowing? It is suggested that neither literary
anthropologists, hermeneutical philosophers, nor philosophers of scie
nce have constructed arguments that compel the rejection of science. '
Thick description', offered as an alternative to science, is shown to
exhibit properties of gossip. Thus the article responds to both questi
ons in the negative and, in conclusion, proposes that the literary ant
hropological approach amounts to a doctrine of Panglossian nihilism.