Contemporary anthropology has opened itself with great enthusiasm to a revision of the traditional bases of the opposition between “nature” and “culture”, following anti-representationalist and hyper-empiricist trends based on a number of philosophical and ethical postulates. At the same time, new configurations in the natural sciences return to their characteristic mechanist models, reasserting their original tenets. The broad contemporaneous field of neurosciences abounds in proposals based on a deterministic materialism, emerging from top technology and broad scope research about the connection between the nervous system and human experience. The coetaneity of these movements demands an expatiation about the points of convergence and divergence between biomedical and anthropological “naturalisms”. It is then necessary to gather some of the links of the tense dialogue in process among the sundry positions in both fields, involving eminent challenges for the anthropological endeavor; as expressed especially in the exhibits of the new Museu do Amanhã (Museum of Tomorrow), in Rio de Janeiro.
Neuroscience; Museum; Science; Determinism; Naturalism