Improved factual description gave rise to early ethnographic observation

Evidence

Gradually, observation and description vastly improved in accuracy. The medieval habit of thinking in terms of analogies gave way to a more sober type of description of the fauna and flora, ways of life, customs, physical characteristics, and social organization of native peoples. We can here begin to see the outlines of an early ethnography or anthropology. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 604

Categorization

• XREF: Sets up the transition to scientific racism and anthropology that Hall traces in the Foucauldian arc of knowledge-power. — connects to: Empirical fact-finding improves substantially with prior theoretical groundwork. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 986