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Historical or “Grand” Theory in Anthropology There are a number of very solid contemporary books on anthropological theory, mostly presented as a historical progression of both positivist and humanistic dialogs and developments (Murphy and Erickson 2017). That approach provides students with an interesting view of the anthropological theoretical debate as a dialectic process of point, counterpoint, and synthesis, leading to new (often labeled “neo”) iterations of the basic theories and counter theories. These theoretical paradigms are sometimes labeled “grand theory” and, for some anthropologists, function more as foundational philosophies for understanding culture and human behavior than as “testable theory.” In contrast, the other social sciences predominantly consider testable theory as the gold standard. The distinction between adherence to “grand theory,” as opposed to a pragmatic focus on testable midrange theory is one of the common distinctions between applied and non-applied medical anthropology.