The paper looks at dlfferent ways in which social and cultural anthropologist consider the scientific status of their discipline. The perspective of Radcliffe-Brown, E. E. Evans­Pritchard, Clifford Geertz and Angel Palerm are considered. The selection does not pretend to be representative of schools or traditions within the field, rather it demostrates a) some of the different conceptions of the scientific status of the discipline and b) present problems that refer to the specificity of anthropological knowledge. A perspectlve that at the same time accounts for the specificity of social sciences vis a vis natural sciences and attemps to achieve formulations of a general theoretical character is proposed.