According to Dan Sperber, his onetime teacher Claude Levi-Strauss straddled the divide that splits modern anthropology between cultural theory and natural science (cognitive science, in particular.

Say "Claude Lévi-Strauss" and people answer "structuralism". This is right as far as it goes, but at the height of his career Lévi-Strauss was also, and quite consistently, a lone defender of a naturalistic and mentalistic perspective in anthropology.

Sperber is an important figure in his own right, a kind of godfather, for instance, to the cognitive science of religion community. [go!]

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