COLUMBUS AND ANTHROPOLOGY AND THE UNKNOWN

This article addresses the relation of the 'unknown' to the 'known' at two periods of European thought. At the time of Columbus the unknown was linked to the known through the notion of 'discovery' within a giv en canon of knowledge: note is taken of certain intellectual implicati ons. The article then moves to the present-day with its greater possib ility of freeing the unknown from necessary linkage to the known: here attention is given to the notion of 'invention' contra discovery and of referentiality contra canonicity. Thence the positions of Columbus and Evans-Pritchard are compared and aspects of the praxis of anthropo logy put under brief critical review, respecting the paradox - implici t throughout the article - of knowing the unknown.