ABSTRACT
Reality is complex, and the first task of any scientist is to delimit specific problems within a restricted field of data. This chapter shows what particular anthropologists and sociologists have done in coping with the consequences of this situation, considering the situation in general terms. After delineating the problems and setting out the procedures which social anthropologists employ to demarcate their fields of study, it applies these to certain essays. The chapter discusses more generally, through specific examples, how other social and human scientists have demarcated their fields of problems and the consequences of this demarcation. It also cites the views of other writers on these topics. It emphasises the need to simplify, to circumscribe, to be naïve, and so on, in analysis in the social sciences. The advises that a writers should not read poetry, or a poet prose: and a social or human scientist may profit by studying disciplines other than his own.
