Anthropology Has Ruined Me

Science in general, and social science in particular, has ruined me on fantasy and scifi. I don't mean to say that majoring first in computer science and then anthropology has made it impossible for me to enjoy these things, but that it causes me to put entirely too much thought into my own worldbuilding.

For those of you without experience majoring in these disciplines, I think it's important to point out that computer science isn't all tapping at a keyboard, and anthropology isn't all paging through rotted tomes written by dead white dudes about Exotic Native Peoples who wear conical hats. On their dongs.

The study of computer science, at least as I learned it, requires much wandering in and out of the doors of chemistry, physics, and high mathematics. I failed chemistry hard, but I enjoy physics and have no problem working mad number magic in the name of programming or another applied skill.

Further, the study of anthropology is... broad. Annoyingly so. I love anthropology, I do, and I try so hard to make that clear to anyone I kvetch to about my major. But it is a schizophrenic science. Sociology, statistics, psychology, ecology, evolutionary biology, human evolutionary biology. I've had my fingers in so many scientific pies that it's hard to distinguish where the influence of one on my way of worldbuilding ends and another begins.

I wonder about so much inconsequential crap that will never wind up in the narratives of my stories. At what age do mothers ween their children? What's the latent function of a particular religious practice? It must have had a purpose at some point of history, even if it's only symbolic now, right? Why are women permitted to serve in the army? Was it always like that? Did some catastrophe or something make people change their minds? Did their minds need to be changed?

What kind of evolutionary chain produces a dragon, or a unicorn, or a bugbear, or anything else writers might describe as a naturally occurring critter?

In a way, it enriches what I make and cheapens what I read. I have all these questions of 'why' and 'how' that come up, and I'm the only one who can answer them. And even when I do answer them, I feel that my explanations are lacking. Even worse, I've wasted valuable plotting time trying to figure it out.

Mad social science, anyone?