ABSTRACT
Cultural materialism has many virtues, foremost among them its explicit appeal to the epistemology of science, but the paradigm is fundamentally flawed in ways that severely limit its usefulness as a guideline for future anthropological research and analysis. When anthropology finally emerges as a mature scientific discipline (one devoted exclusively to discovering facts and generating theories in the genuine scientific senses of the terms), the theoretical principles of cultural materialism will not play a major role. On the other hand, Marvin Harris was a proponent of several essential propositions that can serve as a blueprint for the construction of a mature science of anthropology. The legacy of cultural materialism will be distinct from the legacy of Marvin Harris.
