White 1949
White 1949
White 1949
of Culture
A STUDY OF MAN AND CIVILIZATION
AUTHOR'S NOTE xi
I. Science is Sciencing 3
II. The Symbol: the Origin and Basis of Human
Behavior 22
III. On the Use of Tools by Primates 40
IV. Mind is Minding 49
V. The Expansion of the Scope of Science 55
PART IV CULTUROLOGY
of Culture 397
XIV. The Science
4^
Chapter References
'^^5
BibHography
Index 4^
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Doubleday and Co., Inc., for excerpts from Helen Keller, The
Story of My Life, New York, 1903.
Henrj- Holt and Co., Inc., for an excerpt from John Dewey,
ReconstTuction in Philosophy, New York, 1920; and from Clark
Wissler, An Introduction to Social Anthropology, New York, 1929.
1947)-
8. "Man's Control over Civilization: An Anthropocentric Il-
1948).
10. "The Definition and Prohibition of Incest," (American
Anthropologist, Vol. 50, pp. 416-435, 1948).
"Education: America's Magic," which appeared in School and
Society (Vol. 61, pp. 353-354, 1945) has been incorporated in the
chapter "Man's Control over Civilization: An Anthropocentric
Illusion." Material from "Atomic Energy: An Anthropological
Appraisal" and "Energy and the Development of Civilization"
has been incorporated in the chapter "Energy and the Evolution
of Culture." "Atomic Energy: An Anthropological Appraisal"
was read before the annual meeting of the American Anthro-
pological Association in Philadelphia on December 28, 1945. It
* The curious reader will find interesting comment on this talk by Dr.
have, so to speak, "tried out" the ideas set forth in this book.
They are too numerous to mention here singly and by name. I
to her. ^ ,_.
Leslie A. White
Universit)' of Michigan
Ann Arbor, Michigan
PREFACE
history local
appeared. Ever
groups of
people have been distinguished from one another by dif-
xvii
xviii PREFACE
for example, did not necessarily mean tailored fur clothing and
snug dwellings. As a matter of fact, a great variety of cultures are
Introduction
e preface our treatise on the Science of Culture with an
essay on science in general, "Science is Sciencing." Science
is not a body of data; it is a technique of interpretation. And
this technique is as applicable to cultural phenomena as to any
other class. The science of culture, or the science of psychology,
is not as mature as astronomy or physics; neither is it nearly as
and who use them with great skill and versatility, do not. The
answeris, again, the Symbol. "Mind is Minding" breaks with the
the philosophy that science has had to contend every inch of the
way. And it is this age-old and primitive philosophy that we still
rived from two sources. On the one hand, they reflect analytical
distinctions which may be made within the field of reality:
3
4 THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE
men alike. The use of the word science as a noun not only leads
to jurisdictional disputes— does the study of juvenile delinquency
belong to sociology or to psychology, the study of fossils to
geology or to biology?—but to such questions as, is history a science?
is sociology a science? There is a tendency to identify "science"
with some of its techniques. For example, one can perform ex-
periments in chemistry and make accurate predictions in astron-
omy. Chemistry and astronomy are "sciences." Experimentation
"history and sociology are not sciences." Despite the fact that
much of geology is more historical than certain studies of human
culture, there is a willingness to call the one "a science" but to
deny this status to the other.
Then a distinction is made between the physical sciences
(frequently called by the flattering term "the exact sciences") and
the "social sciences." Implicit in this distinction is the assumption
that a fundamental difference obtains between the nature of
physical reality and human social reality. This assumption leads
to, if indeed it does not include by implication, the further as-
5 THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE
really not
ent from the data of physics ("the exact sciences"), are
susceptible to scientific treatment, hence the social sciences are
really not sciences at all; * they are not and cannot be "scientific."
The same observations are made, although with less emphasis,
experimental physics, and therein lies their strength. They are radi-
cal. Henceforth space by itself, and time by itself, doomed to
are
fade into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two
will preserve an independent reality." * Thus reality confronts us,
guish the temporal aspect of the process from the spatial; although
inseparable in actuality, we may occupy ourselves with either to
the exclusion of the other. Thus we may distinguish three kinds
of processes, one primary, the temporal-formal, and two secondary
3 THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE
unique. The one thing that history never does is to repeat itself:
* To be sure, those who bear the label "historian" concern themselves with
relationships other than temporal:they wish to know where Lincoln was
assassinated as well as when. "The temporal process" would probably be a
better term for our purpose here than "history."
SCIENCE IS SCIENCING 9
phrase), for the concrete experiences of the senses,^ is not only-
* Structure and function are not confined to the realm of metric space.
Structure or form is a characteristic of such non-spatial systems as language,
and rise again, societies and clubs are organized in every age. The
evolutionary process, being in part temporal in character, is also
may be. Actually they usually are not, for the reason that such distinc-
* It
tions except in rare instances —such as the real or imagined kick of Mrs.
O'Lean's cow that started the great Chicago fire, or the honking of the geese
—
who "saved Rome" have no significance for us as ordinary human beings.
But for a philosophy of science the sneeze of an anonymous monkey in the
depths of a jungle is as significant as illustrating the uniqueness of each event
in a temporal series as is the birth of Christ or the death of Caesar.
** Actually, this may depend upon one's point of view, or more accurately,
upon the temporal scope of one's vision. To us, the cosmic process seems to
be evolutionary in character: the universe is expanding (it may be assumed),
or matter is being transmuted into energy. The process seems to be temporal-
formal in character: non-repetitive and irreversible. But this appearance may
be an illusion due to the temporal limits of our observation. Were the period
longer, sufficiently longer, the cosmic process might reveal itself as a repetitive
one: an era of contraction might follow expansion, and so on, in an endless
series of pulsations; matter may be transmuted into energy and re-congealed
into matter, an endless vibration of a cosmic pendulum. So, to a creature that,
compared with us, had an infinitcsimally brief span of observation, the repeti-
ti\'e and rhythmic character of respiration or the heart beat or the rusting of
* Einstein and Infcld have called their recent book The Evolution of
Physics, not the History of Physics, it is significant to note.
SCIENCE IS SCIENCING 15
phenomenon
Likewise a cultural is but a manifestation of biologi-
cal (human beings) and inanimate phenomena organized in a
special manner. Thus events on tlie biologic level (for levels, or
strata, are what these categories are in reality) can be dealt with
in terms of inanimate phenomena: a plant or animal is so much
carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen; it has weight, will fall as a rock, may
be frozen, transformed by fire, and so on. Similarly, a cultural
course, that bees, bullets, and bats are composed of atoms and
molecules, and this fact is not without significance. But we cannot
appreciate the difference between bees and bullets on the one
hand or between bees and bats on the other on the basis of physi-
into the relationship between the inanimate and the living. Similar
tudes are functions of the culture in which he was born, also. His
18 THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE
between them, depends upon our purposes and ends. Both ap-
proaches are equally legitimate and potentially profitable.
In summary, we see that we have two classifications of reality
which cut across each other at right angles: the one has to do with
structure (the atom, the cell, the symbol), the other has to do
with process (temporal, formal, and temporal-formal). This gives
us nine categories in which all reality and all manners of sciencing
may be logically and consistently divided as indicated in the
diagram on the opposite page.
On the inanimate level we have cosmic and galactic histories
(such as they are or may be), the history of our solar system, the
history of the earth or of a continent, a mountain chain, a river,
lutionists: they have poured the baby out with the bath. But the
victory of the anti-evolutionists on the cultural level is only tempo-
rary. As social science matures, the basic concept of science and
philosophy, that reality is temporal-formal in character, will win
its way on the cultural level as it has upon the biologic and inani-
mate levels.
have come into use as science has grown, and this growth has
been more or less accidental. The concepts time and space existed
long before it was discovered that time and space are but aspects
of a third thing for which there is no more adequate a name than
space-time. But the fact that the names of "the sciences" do not
correspond to our nine categories in no way invalidates the cate-
gories. The maturity of science in any field can be rather accu-
rately gauged by its vocabulary: as "a science" matures it develops
its own terminology. This has taken place extensively in the physi-
cal and the biological sciences. And such words as instinct,
minology.
For the scientific worker such terms as psychology, botany,
chemistiy, etc., will no doubt continue to be useful and satis-
tion should make new terms necessary. But for the thinker, for
the philosopher of science, new technical terms are needed. I shall
not presume to supply names for our nine categories. But, since
they represent a realistic and logical analysis of the field, it seems
likely that as these categories obtrude themselves more and more
into systematic thinking, they will eventually receive names.
CHAPTER TWO
THE SYMBOL:
The Oriain and Basis of Human Behavior
"In the Word was the Beginning . . . the beginning of Man and of
Culture."
the symbol is the basic unit of all human behavior and civilization.
All human behavior originates in the use of symbols. It was the
symbol which transformed our anthropoid ancestors into men
and made them human. All civilizations have been generated, and
are perpetuated, only by the use of symbols. It is the symbol which
transforms an infant of Homo sapiens into a human being; deaf
mutes who grow up without the use of symbols are not human
beings. All human behavior consists of, or is dependent upon, the
use of symbols. Human behavior is symbolic behavior; symbolic
behavior is human behavior. The symbol is the universe of
humanity.
II
"in spite of his large brain, it cannot be said that man has any
mental traits that are peculiar to him ... All of these human su-
periorities are merely relative or differences of degree." Professor
Ralph Linton, an anthropologist, writes in The Study of Man:
*'The differences between men and animals in all these [behavior]
respects are enormous, but they seem to be differences in quantity
fact that black (white among the Chinese) is the color of mourn-
ing. No chimpanzee or laboratory rat can appreciate the difference
between Holy water and distilled water, or grasp the meaning of
Tuesday, 3, or sin. No animal save man can distinguish a cousin
from an uncle, or a cross cousin from a parallel cousin. Only man
can commit the crime of incest or adultery; only he can remember
the Sabbath and keep it Holy. It is not, as we well know, that the
lower animals can do these things but to a lesser degree than our-
selves; they cannot perform these acts of appreciation and dis-
tinction at all. It is, as Descartes said long ago, "not only that the
brutes have less Reason than man, but that they have none at
2
all."
saying that the difference is merely one of degree: man has a bigger
mind, "larger power of association," wider range of activities, etc.
Ill
* "Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?" —Romeo and Jnliet, Act I, Sc. i.
26 THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE
stands for courage or cowardice, "stop" or "go"; nor can one dis-
cover the spirit in a fetish by any amount of physical or chemical
will not tell you whether santo means "holy" or "hungry." The
keenest senses cannot capture the value of holy water. Yet, as we
all know, the Spaniards and the Aztecs did discover each other's
meanings and appreciate each other's values. But not with sensory
means. Each was able to enter the world of the other only by
virtue of a faculty for which we have no better name than symhoh
But a thing which in one context is a symbol is, in another con-
text, not a symbol but a sign. Thus, a word is a symbol only when
one is concerned with the distinction between its meaning and its
use, with its physical form. The word then functions as a sign,
5'y'^^ou v^ S^linU
THE SYMBOL 27
coined for the occasion. On the other hand, any one of a great
number and variety of responses may become evocable by a given
stimulus. I'hus, so far as the origin of the relationship between
vocal stimulus and response is concerned, the nature of the rela-
The man differs from the dog— and all other creatures— in that
he can and does phy an what value the
active role in determining
vocal stimulus is to have, and the dog cannot. The dog does not
and cannot play an active part in determining the value of the
vocal stimulus. Whether he is to roll over or go fetch at a given
stimulus, or whether the stimulus for roll over be one combination
of sounds or another is a matter in which the dog has nothing
whatever to "say." He plays a purely passive role and can do
nothing else. He learns the meaning of a vocal command just as
his salivary glands may learn to respond to the sound of a bell. But
man plays an active role and thus becomes a creator: let x equal
three pounds of coal and it does equal three pounds of coal; let
becomes so. This creative faculty, that of freely, actively, and arbi-
quire new meanings, but they cannot create and bestow them.
Only man can do this. To use a crude analogy, lower animals are
like a person who has only the receiving apparatus for wireless
messages: he can receive messages but cannot send them. Man can
do both. And this difference is one of kind, not of degree: a crea-
ture can either "arbitrarily impose signification," can either create
and bestow values, or he cannot. There are no intermediate
stages. This difference may appear slight, but, as a carpenter once
told William James in discussing differences between men, "It's
alone.
30 THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE
IV
John Locke, too, saw clearly that "the power of abstracting is not
at all in them [i.e., beasts], and that the having of general ideas
is that which puts a perfect distinction between man and brutes,
and is an excellency which the faculties of brutes do by no means
attain to . . . they have no use of words or any other general
signs." ^ The great British anthropologist, E. B. Tylor, remarked
upon "the mental gulf that divides the lowest savage from the
highest ape ... A young child can understand what is not proved
to have entered the mind of the cleverest dog, elephant, or ape." ^
And, of course, there are many today who recognize the "mental
gulf" between man and other species.
Thus, for over a century we have had, side by side, two traditions
in comparative psychology. One has declared that man does not
differ from other animals in mental abilities except in degree. The
other has seen clearly that man is unique in at least one respect,
V
Very little indeed is known of the organic basis of the sym-
bolic faculty: we know next to nothing of the neurology of
"symbolling." And very few scientists— anatomists, neurologists or
physical anthropologists— appear to be interested in the subject.
lem. The duty and task of giving an account of the neural basis of
symbolling does not, however, fall within the province of the
sociologist or the cultural anthropologist. On the contrary, he
should scrupulously exclude it as irrelevant to his problems and
interests; to introduce it would bring only confusion. It is enough
for the sociologist or cultural anthropologist to take the ability to
one: ". . . man has no new kinds of brain cells or brain cell con-
with the muscles of the tongue, with the larynx, etc. But, as we
know, symbolling is not at all confined to the use of these organs.
One may symbol with any part of the body that he can move at
will.«
VI
All culture (civilization) depends upon the symbol. It was
the exercise of the symbolic faculty that brought culture into ex-
istence and it is the use of symbols that makes the perpetuation
of culture possible. Without the symbol there would be no cul-
ture, and man would be merely an animal, not a human being.
Articulate speech is the most important form of symbolic ex-
among the higher apes, for it was articulate speech that trans-
To be sure, with all his culture man is still an animal and strives
for the same ends that all other living creatures strive for: the
preservation of the individual and the perpetuation of the race.
In concrete terms these ends are food, shelter from the elements,
defense from enemies, health, and offspring. The fact that man
strives for these ends just as all other animals do has, no doubt,
led many to declare that there is "no fundamental difference be-
tween the behavior of man and of other creatures." But man does
differ, not in ends but in means. Man's means are cultural means:
culture is simply the human animal's way of living. And, since
these means, culture, are dependent upon a faculty possessed by
man alone, the ability to use symbols, the difference between the
behavior of man and of all other creatures is not merely great, but
basic and fundamental.
VII
today. But the use to which these lupine wards and "feral men"
are put by some sociologists and psychologists is a good one,
namely, to show that a member of the species Homo sapiens who
lives is a world without symbols is not a human being but a brute.
To paraphrase Voltaire, one might say that if wolf children did
not exist "social science" would have to invent them.
Children who have been cut off from human intercourse for
yearsby blindness and deafness but who have eventually effected
communication with their fellows on a symbolic level are ex-
ceedingly illuminating. The ease of Helen Keller is exceptionally
THE SYMBOL 37
has a name."
Helen confused the word signs for "mug" and "water" because,
apparently, both were associated with drinking. Miss Sullivan
made a few attempts to clear up this confusion but without suc-
cess. One morning, however, about a month after Miss Sullivan's
arrival, the two went out to the pump in the garden. What hap-
pened then is best told in their own words:
I made Helen hold her mug under the spout while I pumped.
denly turning round she asked for my name ... In a few hours
she had added thirty new words to her vocabulary.
But these words were now more than mere signs as they are to
a dog and as they had been to Helen up to then. They were sym-
38 THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE
boh. Helen had at last grasped and turned the key that admitted
her for the first time to a new universe: the world of human be-
years, sealed in dark and silent isolation by eyes that could not see
and ears that heard not. But now she had crossed the boundary
and entered a new land. Henceforth her progress would be rapid.
thing had a name, and each name gave birth to a new thought.
As we returned to the house ever}' object which I touched seemed
to quiver with life. That was because I saw everything with the
strange new sight that had come to me."
Helen became humanized rapidly. "I see an improvement in
Helen from day to day," Miss Sullivan wrote in her diary, "almost
horn hour to hour. Everything must have a name now . . . She
drops the signs and pantomime she used before as soon as she has
words to supply their place . . . We notice her face grows more
expressive each day . .
."
THE SYMBOL 39
VIII
He admitted that some of the lower animals use tools, but he in-
book. The Mentality of Apes, we know that apes can and do make
tools. The evidence on this point is accepted as conclusive by such
40
ON THE USE OF TOOLS BY PRIMATES 41
(p. 7). And Wilhelm Schmidt, the leader of the so-called Kultur-
kreis school of anthropology, is unwilling to admit that the lower
primates are able even to use "real tools," let alone make them.^
Scientific studies of apes during recent decades have disclosed a
skill and a versatility in the use of tools that is quite remarkable.
They readily employ sticks as levers; they build structures of boxes;
use sticks in digging; and otherwise employ a great variety of ma-
terials as tools. More noteworthy still, apes (chimpanzees) have
shown themselves capable of inventing—by a process of under-
standing and insight— tools, and of accomplishing their manufac-
ture in instances that required the artificial shaping of materials.
Sultan, one of the chimpanzees observed by Kohler, combined
two sticks by inserting the end of one into the hollow end of the
other, thus making a tool long enough to obtain food hitherto out
a true tool and not used simply by accident," writes the compara-
tive psychologist Schnierla, "was indicated by the fact that when
the sticks became separated, the animal straightway reconnected
them in a manner that suggested an understanding of their func-
tion together." * He even contrived to put three sticks together
in this manner. Once when the one stick was too large to be in-
serted into the hollow end of the other. Sultan chewed it down
until it would fit. Chimpanzees readily build structures of boxes
and crates, sometimes four or five storeys high, in order to obtain
food originally suspended out of reach. They demonstrate in this
The limitations upon the use of tools by apes are not imposed,
it appears, by anatomical or sensory shortcomings. The senses of
apes, with the exception of the sense of statics, are quite as keen
and as suitable for wielding material objects as are those of men.
Nor are apes limited to coarse and crude implements, or to those
requiring brute strength rather than delicacy. They can handle
string and straws with skill; they are able deftly to remove slivers
Professor R. H. Lowie has suggested that the reason for the lack
of culture among apes lies in their inability to transmit their tool
knowledge and experience from one to another by imitation. "If
his neighbors imitated him," says Professor Lowie, speaking of
the chimpanzee who invents and uses a tool, "if he taught them
his trick and they all passed it on to their offspring, chimpanzees
ON THE USE OF TOOLS BY PRIMATES 43
cannot be engaged in wielding tools all the time. But in the ape,
tool-experience is discontinuous on the subjective side as well as
upon the objective. "Out of sight out of mind" fairly well char-
acterizes the ape's mentality. Kohler observes that the "disap-
pearance of a sick (or dying) animal [chimpanzee] has little effect
his problem, and that is the end of it. On the inner, subjective
side, the ape's tool-experience is limited to the external and overt
experience. Tool-using among apes is thus a discontinuous_psycho-
logical process subjectively as well as objectively;..
This inner world of ideas in which man dwells seems more real
they are the real things; they endure forever; material objects and
sensory experiences are merely imperfect and ephemeral manifesta-
ON THE USE OF TOOLS BY PRIMATES 47
* Plato thought of these ideas as "laid up in the mind of God" rather than
originating and functioning in the minds of men. But it is not uncommon
for man to mistake himself for God; even great philosophers are guilty of this
cnor occasionally.
48 THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE
"We should have a great many fewer disputes in the world if words
were taken for what they are, signs of our ideas only, and not for things
in themselves." —
Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.
These are the opening words of the article "Body and Mind" in
the Encyclopedia oi Religion and Ethics by James Lewis
Mclntyre, Anderson lecturer in comparative psychology to the
University of Aberdeen. Hundreds of books and thousands of
lectures and articles have been devoted to the "mind-body" prob-
lem. How is it possible for the body to have a mind? How can the
mind have a body? Which is the reality,the body or the mind?
How are body and mind articulated with each other? These are
some of the questions which have plagued mankind for many a
century. And "to many they appear no nearer to solution now
than then."
Why has the "solution" not been reached? Where is the
difficulty?
49
50 THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE
It is the thesis of this essay that the "solution" has not been
reached because the problem is a false one, somewhat like the
was out. The common people went around saying, "There ain't
no Golshok." And they hved happily ever after.
And so it has been with "Mind." "Mind" is a noun. A noun is
a name of something. Therefore there must be something in the
does not sound ridiculous at all to say that a radish minds, i.e.,
cutting is to a knife.**
But Alexander merely cut the Gordian knot; he did not untie
it. Neither have we "solved" the mind-body problem, for in the
* The
Dictionary of Psychology, H. C. Warren, ed., defines mind as "the
sum an organism by means of which it responds as
total of those activities of
an integrated, dynamic system to external forces."
** Since the above was written, I have learned that a Chinese philosopher.
Fan Chen, of the fifth century A.D., said the same thing and in almost the
same words: "The body is the material basis of the spirit, and the spirit is
only the functioning of the body. The spirit is to the body what sharpness
is to a sharp knife. We
have never known the existence of sharpness after
destruction of the knife. How can we admit the survival of the spirit when
the body is gone?" Quoted by Hu Shih in the symposium Living Philoso-
phies, (New York, 1931), pp. 243-44.
Aristotle, too, "rejected any attempt to make the soul a thing or entity."
Instead he treated it as a "function of the organism," as "a class of motions,"
(Brett, 1929) p. 707.
^
MIND IS MINDING 53
material expressions. So far as I know, there is no convincing
proof for the non-existence of Santa Claus. Mankind progresses,
often, not by disproving propositions but by outgrowing them.
The "Mind-Body" problem is of one piece with the Vitalism-
Mechanism controversy. No one has ever "disproved" the theory
of Vitalism, but scientists, and many philosophers, are agreed
that the time has come when it should be ignored as obsolete,
outgrown and, above all, sterile. It is not that the philosophy of
Mechanism isTrue (with a capital T) and that of Vitalism False.
It is that Mechanism has been fruitful, productive; Vitalism
barren and sterile. Vitalism as "a view is exactly opposite to
those which have led to all the scientific piogTcss that has been
made," declares Professor H. H. Newman.^ Biologists have "clung
to the materialistic or mechanistic explanation of life, simply be-
cause was the only way in which progress could be made" ^
it
best and confusing and paralyzing at its worst. The opposite view,
THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE
54
a function of the
minding, or behavior, that mind
is
that mind is
"Anyone who acquainted with the history of science will admit that
is
its all ages, meant, and now more than ever means,
progress has, in
the extension of the province of what we call matter and causation,
and the concomitant gradual banishment from all regions of human
thought of what we call spirit and spontaneity ." T. H. Huxley,
. . —
The Physical Basis of Lite.
JK>
hen we survey the history of science we see at a glance
that progress has not been equal and uniform on all fronts.
55
56 THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE
"Social"
Sciences
THE EXPANSION OF THE SCOPE OF SCIENCE 57
somewhat from ours. He does not begin with the events of history,
with dates and sequences, and with varying degrees of develop-
ment among the sciences, and then proceed to consider what
interpretation might be given to these facts. Rather, he begins
with the nature of the sciences, as he conceives it, and with what
he assumes to be their necessary logical relationships one to an-
other. The "hierarchy" of the sciences is arrived at by deduction.
It is a "rational order" to Comte (p. 43). He observes, however,
that his "classification agrees in the main, with the history of
science; the more general and simple sciences actually occurring
first and advancing best in human history, and being followed by
the more complex and restricted," (p. 43y. Thus, the general
picture of the development of the sciences/ as seen by Comte is
dnd physical processes: smelling or seeing the food and the various
physiological responses which find overt expression in approach-
ing and seizing it; and the physiological processes may be broken
down into chemical reactions and physical events. In this sense,
thephenomena of one science may be said to be more "complex"
than those of another. And in this sense, also, one may say that
one science "rests upon" another.
While the foregoing is perfectly true logically and philosophi-
cally, it is beside the point scientifically. From the standpoint of
the scientist, there is only one class of phenomena to be con-
sidered in any given situation. Even in biochemistry, which might
appear to include two classes of phenomena, we really have only
one class; the possibility of referring biochemical events to
As a matter of fact, one could make a good case for the exact
opposite of the proposition that social scientists sometimes use to
rationalize their shortcomings, and say that the complexity of
phenomena and the difficulty of scientific interpretation increase
values between one thing and another. Thus he declares that the
hoot of the owl presages death, a falling star means good luck,
In the first type, man unconsciously projects himself into the ex-
ternal world, describing and interpreting in terms of his own
it
"^
THE EXPANSION OF THE SCOPE OF SCIENCE 65
spirit makes the earth, another brings rain, a third sends game or
brings forth crops. The gods favor or oppose certain types of eco-
nomic and pohtical systems, and aid the armies of their chosen
nations. Thus man creates the world in his own image. This is
the philosophy of supernaturalism of animism and anthropo- :
morphism.
In the second type of philosophy, the phenomena of nature are
explained in terms of themselves, in terms of the events of nature.
Thus, rain falls because other meteorologic phenomena precede
and accompany rainfall; a fossil is merely a link in a chain of
paleontologic events. Explanation in this type of philosophy con-
sists of a recitation of relevant events; scientific explanation is thus
condensed description. This is the philosophy of naturalism.
Between these two major types, in the process of development
of philosophy, lies an intermediate, or transitional type, which
Comte has called "metaphysical." This may be illustrated by such
statements as "fossils were produced by stone-making forces;"
"opium puts one to sleep because of its dormative powers," "cattle
graze together because of a gregarious instinct." * This kind of
interpretation partakes of both of the major types of philosophy.
It eschews animism, and points to the external world for its ex-
animism.
In the beginning of human history, man's philosophies were
wholly animistic; he diffused his psyche throughout the cosmos;
that order. The distinction between the self and the not-self was
achieved in astronomy and physics before it was made in physiol-
* "To the Omaha nothing is without life: the rock Hves, so do the cloud,
the tree, the animal. He projects his own consciousness upon all things, and
ascribes to them experiences and characteristics with which he is familiar;
there is to in common between all creatures and all natural
him something
forms, . something he conceives of as akin to his own conscious
. . this
being," Alice C. Fletcher, "Wakonda," in Handbook of American Indians,
Part 2, (Bulletin 30, Bureau of American Ethnology, Washington, 1910).
THE EXPANSION OF THE SCOPE OF SCIENCE dJ
note that systematic observation of the stars was begun under the
behef that they exert a powerful influence upon man's daily life.
Vestiges of this belief are still preserved in the names of the days
of the week: Sun's day, Saturn's day, etc. And enough of this
ancient belief still flourishes to make astrology a profitable busi-
"^
ness enterprise even today.
But as mankind accumulated experience and compared one
thing with another, he discovered that stars exert less influence
upon his life than such terrestrial phenomena as those of climate,
was discovered that, intimate as man is with his habitat, and in-
* According to Timt Magazine for March 25, 1946, p. 23, there were
25,000 practicing astrologers in the United States at that time; the five leading
astrological periodicals had a combined circulation of nearly one million; and
one of the leading astrological manuals sold at least 1,000,000 copies of its
1945 issue for $1 per copy.
** See Henri Poincare's fine essay on astronomy, the mother of science, in
T\it Value oi Science, Ch. VI.
^ THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE
feels, are two different things.* The self that he regards in "self-
man another. The effects of work and rest are obvious. Disposition
"body" arc two different things. Descartes, certainly one of the greatest minds
of modern times, maintains that "it is certain that I, [that is, "my mind, by
which I am what I am"], is entirely and truly distinct from my body, and
may exist without it," Meditations, No. VI.
** ". and although the whole mind seems to be united to the whole
. .
body, yet, when a foot, an arm, or any other part is cut off, I am conscious
that nothing has been taken from my mind," idem.
THE EXPANSION OF THE SCOPE OF SCIENCE 69
been wholly won yet. Mental life is still called "the human spirit"
in many circles, and the soul and mind still walk hand in hand
This distinction is made most easily when one deals with phe-
nomena which play an insignificant role as determinants of human
behavior. Conversely, it is difficult to distinguish between the
self and the not-self where phenomena are intimate and powerful
determinants. The human race has discovered which are the
powerful determinants and which the insignificant through
experience; there was no a priori way of knowing.
The heavenly bodies, being more remote and less significant as
while the argument based upon "the universal and the simple as
pains to point out repeatedly that the obstacles which oppose the
growth of social science are the theological and metaphysical
philosophies which must be driven from the field of social phe-
nomena before a genuine social science can be achieved. Although
we reject Comte's own explanation of the order of filiation of the
sciences, we could, and indeed have, applied his theory of
the three stages in the development of philosophy to the solution
of this problem. What we have done, in effect, is to show that
the "theological" (supernaturalistic) philosophy has been dis-
lodged and driven first, and to the greatest extent, from inter-
PHYSICS
CHElMlSTRy
^t^ATOMy
pVAYSlOLOGy
^syCHOLOGy
e^oClOLOCy
physical PHYSICAL
science; /SCIENCES
.BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
of, and what the nature and scope of a science of culture would
be.
We may illustrate with the following example: a number of
Navaho Indians were spending the night in a large house near
their reservation when a party of other Navahos approached.
deal with both aspects, the individual and the social, of this phe-
nomenon. He can inquire into their feelings, ideas, and so on, and
throw much light upon the matter. But there is a point beyond
which the psychologist cannot go: He cannot explain why the
Navahos observe the mother-in-law taboo whereas their close
explain why one tribe has this custom while another does not.
The psychologist does not always realize this. Sometimes he de-
clares that the institution exists because the people think and
feel and act in a certain way; that the institution is merely the
crystallization of certain psychological processes. He fails to realize
that it is the other way around: the people feel, think and act the
way they do because they possess— or, more accurately, are
possessed by— a certain custom. Manifestly, the psychologist can-
not explain why the Indian organism in the Navaho tribe behaves
in such a way as to produce the mother-in-law taboo while the
Indian organism in the Hopi tribe does not behave in that
manner.
78 THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE
act upon him from the outside as meteorologic forces do.* Culture
can be transferred without migration, from one people to
freely,
they are forces as real as cosmic forces they also act upon the individual
. . .
patrilineal clans there does not make sense. To say that one kind
of process of interaction produces matrilineal, another kind of
process patrilineal, clans is to put the cart before the horse. It is
the type of clan, the culture trait, that determines the form of
social interaction; matrilineal clans will produce one type of inter-
* "All relations or actions between one part of ... [a material system] and
another are called Internal relations or actions. Those between the whole or
any part of the system, and bodies not included in the system, are called
External relations or actions," Clerk Maxwell, (1892), p. 11-12.
** Herbert Spencer, too, distinguished physiology from psychology in terms
of "internal relations" and "external relations," "The Classification of the
Sciences," Table III.
82 THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE
"mental phenomena" and that sociology is, for the most part,
ology as "the science of the social process," but he also states that
the interpretation of the social process is "social psychology."
Thus, sociology and social psychology appear to be one and the
same. To Giddings "societal psychology is substantially the same
thing as sociology." And quite recently L. L. Bernard has de-
"
clared that "modern sociology becomes largely social psychology,"
Thus sociology turns out to be social psychology, and social
psychology is psychology, according to the testimony of sociolo-
THE EXPANSION OF THE SCOPE OF SCIENCE 83
culture they translate it into the only language they know: the
morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits ac-
quired by man as a member of society." Secondly, Tylor makes it
clear that this new science will take as its object of study, not
human behavior, nor social process or interaction, but culture
traits themselves as a separate and distinct class of phenomena.
The study "not of tribes and nations, but the condition of knowl-
S8 THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE
edge, religion, art, custom, and the like among them" is the task
concealed his true thought.** In the first place he calls his science
"sociology" rather than a "science of culture" as Tylor did, and he
lacks the terminology to distinguish between the social and the
cultural. He designates the class of traditional super-psychologic
symbolic phenomena which we call "culture" by such terms as
"collective consciousness," which has not only obscured his
thought but has brought upon him the charge of mysticism. But
to one who can reach his thought and meaning through the
facade of inappropriate terminology, it will be quite apparent that
Durkheim is talking about culture rather than "society" or "social
* Having previously stated that the founding of the science of culture was
primarily the work of anthropology the question arises. Was not Durkheim a
sociologist? It is Durkheim called his science "sociology."
of course a fact that
But it is nature and content was very different from the
also true that its
works of most sociologists. As Bernard has put it, "the Durkheim school gen-
erally has been closer to anthrop>ology than to sociology," (article "Social
Psychology," Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, p. 154).
** See the opening words of Durkheim 's Preface to the second edition of
The Rules for his own statement about how he was misunderstood by his
colleagues.
THE EXPANSION OF THE SCOPE OF SCIENCE 89
Durkheim is speaking of culture when he says:
Society [i.e., culture] is a reality sui generis; it has its own pecul-
iar characteristics . . . The determining cause of a social fact
ing about culture traits and their behavior rather than human
organisms and their interactions, but most of his successors have
either tried to reduce his culturology to the social psychology of
interaction or have dismissed it as "mysticism." Despite misunder-
standing, however, Durkheim's influence has been considerable,
and he will eventually come to be recognized as one of the
founders of the science of culture.
In the works of Tylor and Durkheim the science of culture got
ture traits], to study their distribution over the earth, and above
all the gross outlines of their history." Wissler is interested in the
THE EXPANSION OF THE SCOPE OF SCIENCE 93
fact that for a long time man was so intent upon his individual-
ism, he failed to sense the existence of society, and that to
such a thing as culture was totally blind. But we have seen how
our people are just becoming conscious of the existence of
culture ... So while we have attained social consciousness . . .
space were at our disposal. But we have cited enough to show that
some progress in the direction of a science of culture has been
made since the days of Tylor and Durkheim.
But the new science has encountered considerable opposition as
well as support. The extension of the point of view of science to
the realm of human institutions has aroused the opposition and
resentment of champions of the older philosophy of free will. As
Durkheim has expressed it:
preciate the direction that science has been taking for more than
a century, that it has been moving upward from the individual
psychologic level to the social psychologic, and from there to the
super-psychologic, or culturologic, level. He feels only the impact
96 THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE
phenomena.
THE EXPANSION OF THE SCOPE OF SCIENCE 97
impinge upon man from the outside and profoundly affect his
behavior. And it is, of course, obvious that this is the case. From
birth— and even before— culture traits in the form of ideas, senti-
ments, acts, and material objects act upon the human organism
and cause it to behave in this way and that. And it is not as
"absurd" as Radcliffe-Brown would have us think to "hold a
quadratic equation [i.e., an idea or set of ideas] capable of com-
mitting a murder," A culture trait in the form of an idea may so
stimulate the human organism as to cause it to kill another human
being. This is in fact a very common thing in cases of witchcraft,
the killing of one or both of twins at birth, and many other cul-
tural situations. A culture trait in the form of a sentiment-charged
idea will cause a Japanese general to disembowel himself in atone-
ment for disgrace or failure, or an occidental officer to blow out his
brains with a pistol. It would, of course, be silly to argue that it
was the person, the human organism, that actually does the killing
in the examples just cited. Of course it was the human being. But
—and this is the point at issue in a scientific analysis of behavior-
it was the culture trait, not the human being, that was the determi-
nant of the behavior, and hence was the cause, scientifically speak-
ing, of the homicides. The human organism does not kill witches
or commit hara-kiri because of any inherent property or tendency.
* Recall Durkheim's emphasis upon the prof>osition that social facts arc
things (choses). This proposition was "at the very basis of . . . [his] method,"
(The Rules, p. xliii).
98 THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE
acts directly upon and influences other culture traits such as divi-
these cultural events could not have taken place had it not been
for human organisms. But is our account of the influence of the
automobile upon other culture traits made any more realistic by
introducing these organisms into it? Not one whit. The develop-
ment of the symphony or non-Euclidean geometry could not have
taken place without the respiratory and digestive processes of com-
posers and mathematicians. But to inject these physiologic proc-
simply don't occur; it goes without saying that they do not. Every
physicist knows that the most effective— if not the only— way to
arrive at the formulas and propositions necessary to explain physi-
cal phenomena is to substitute ideal situations for real ones.* The
only way, for example, to arrive at a law of falling bodies is to
imagine them falling through a perfect vacuum—a situation that
vidual and society." "It is always the individual that really thinks
and acts and dreams and revolts," Sapir maintained. Sapir's "ap-
and actions accord with laws as definite as those which govern the
106 THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE
of free will, which still dominates our thinking about man and his
behavior, generates vigorous opposition to a science of culture.
He wrote:
to live in." " Much of her book, And Keep Your Powder Dry,
ispermeated with the philosophy of Free Will. Dr. John R.
Swanton closes his essay "Are Wars Inevitable?" with the assur-
ance that "all that is needed [to terminate warfare] is the will to
do so." Ralph Linton espouses the philosophy of free will and
the theory of social change through education in his lecture to
teachers entitled "Potential Contributions of Cultural Anthro-
pology to Teacher Education." "I believe," he says, "that there
Here we are told by Dr. David Bidney that "man, under God,*
controls his own cultural destiny and is free to choose and realize
the ends he would achieve," (p. 541). With the re-introduction
social system reached the limits of its capacity for growth. Mass
unemployment, over-production and glutted markets, relieved
only by periodic World Wars, are the indexes of this condition.
An obsolete social system is striving to maintain itself against
technological imperatives for change. Although there have been
some gains— the destruction of the feudal houses of Romanoff,
Hapsburg and Hohenzollern— the status quo has had, on the
whole, the better of it in the struggle. The powers victorious in
the war just ended are dedicated to the status quo ante bellum,
to the preservation of the old system of capitalism, empire and
imperialism. Our whole life is pervaded, therefore, by reactionary
* Kroeber charitably grants Bidney his God, remarking that he does not
see why he should be concerned with the use of God, by Bidney or Toynbee,
in their interpretations of culture "until it is evident that their attitude affects
the results of their studies" (1948, p. 413). But how could it be otherwise
than to affect their interpretations? And do we not already know what this
effect will be? The use of "God" as an explanatory device is hardly original
with Bidney and Toynbee. Have we not had centuries and centuries of this
kind of interpretation? And has not the development of science been, to a
very great extent, an attempt to outgrow and get away from such sterile and
mystical concepts as "God" as explanatory devices?
It is worth pointing out as a relevant fact in this connection that Bidney
was not trained in anthropology but in philosophy, where, presumably, there
is still a place and a use for "God" as an explanatory concept.
no THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE
ology is the youngest member of the family. Nor has social evolu-
tion reached the end of its rope. Culture is but a million years old
and we have some twenty million years ahead of us— unless, of
course, the techniques of destruction develop to the point of
extermination. The way of life that "we fought to maintain" will
jected from the human mind. Free will and caprice gave way to
determinism and natural law. But this transition in point of view
was not effected throughout the whole range of philosophy at
once. On the contrary it began in certain areas of experience and
spread from there to others. It got a foothold first in the study
But sociology, the science of society, was not the end of the
road of science as Comte and many others supposed. There was
one more class of determinants of human behavior to be dealt
with, the most intimate and powerful of all: culture. Just as
psychologists found it difficult to envisage a collective psychology
beyond an individualistic one, so have sociologists found it hard
to envisage a science of culture beyond the horizon of "social
interaction." But science cannot and will not stop in its onward
march, in its movement of expansion, until it has fulfilled its
he chooses of his own free will. Many are still prattling about
how "we" are going to construct the post-war world, nursing, in
Durkheim's phrase, the illusion of omnipotence. There is, as
has been done, science will have captured the last remaining
stronghold of the old philosophy; it will have reached its final
boundary.
All sciences are classified into three groups: (1) the sciences of
order— logic and various forms of mathematics; ( 2 ) the energetical
sciences— mechanics, physics, and chemistry; and (3) the bio-
logical sciences which he subdivides into physiology, psychology,
and culturology. The sciences of order are the simplest as well as
might mean? Does he mean that the native mental ability of man
increased? This can hardly have been appreciable within a period
means that man's
of time as brief as the history of science. If he
techniques of interpretation of experience were improved, might
this not well be that he learned to distinguish the self from the
(p. 167). This science, he says, "is usually designated by the im-
proper name of scx:io]ogy" (p. 167). And here Ostwald, a chemist,
demonstrates that he has seen clearly what virtually no soci-
the fact that man, . . . even in the very early stages of his
development, has unquestionably been a social being, so that,
for much the greater part, specifically human culture has shown
itself to be the culture of groups of people living together
socially and busying themselves in common. This special nature
of human culture, however, is relatively a secondary phe-
nomenon; and it is, moreover, not entirely general, for certain
cultural performances have been, and can in the future be, ac-
complished by a single individual. Thus, socializing mankind is
an important phenomenon in this field; indeed, it is one of the
Introduction
K uman
different
behavior
elements:
is
a
a compound made up
biological— neuro-sensory-muscular-
of two quite
"Social facts are not simply the development of psychic facts; the latter
are in large part merely the continuation of the former inside people's
minds. This proposition is extremely important, for the opposite point
of view inclines the sociologist at every instant to take the cause for
the effect and vice versa. For example, if, as often happens, one sees in
the organization of the family the logically necessary expression of
human sentiments inherent in every mind, the true order of facts is
reversed. On the contrary, it is the social organization of the relation-
ships of kinship which has determined the respective sentiments of
parents and children Every time that a social phenomenon is
. . .
121
122 THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE
own. On the other hand is the cultural tradition into which the
organism is born. There is, of course, no necessary relation be-
tween the infant organism and the particular type of culture into
which it is born. It could have been born into one cultural tra-
think, feel and act in one way; if into another, his behavior will
be correspondingly different. Human behavior is, therefore, al-
will follow. But in the human species this type is very broad and
contains infinite variation within The relationship between
itself.
man and culture seems close only when we contrast man with
other animals. The picture is quite otherwise when we confine
our observations to the human species. Within this category,
what relationship can we discover between organism and type of
culture? The answer is "None",— none, that is, of a functional
nature; there are only chance, historical associations. There is, for
long noses, blue eyes, "slant" eyes, relatively large livers, and
so on. It mav be assumed that functional variation accompanies
structural variation. Thus it is reasonable to suppose that there
are some innate psychological differences among the various races
of mankind. But one must not be misled by appearances. The
differences among races which are most easily observed are con-
fined to superficial physical features such as color of skin, color
and shape of hair, size of lip, shape of nose, and so on. In basic
features, such as the nervous, glandular, and muscular systems,
blood, bones, and sense organs, they are impressively uniform.
From a biological standpoint, the differences among men appear
to be insignificant indeed when compared with their similarities.
From the standpoint of human behavior, too, all evidence points
to an utter insignificance of biological factors as compared with
culture in any consideration of behavior variations.* As a matter
of fact, it cannot be shown that any variation of human behavior
is due to variation of a biological nature. In other words, in the
thus put in quite a different light from the one in which it is fre-
* We
are speaking here, as elsewhere in this chapter, of human behavior
in the mass, in terms of societies, tribes or nations, not of individual or-
ganisms.
CULTUROLOGICAL VS. PSYCHOLOGICAL INTERPRETATIONS 125
man, says: "It is obvious that if there is any general law under-
lying all marriage prohibitions it must be founded on human
emotions and reactions." ^ Hitler's "rapid rise to power, the spread
"To me, as to most students of the subject, the final aim of the
study of society is the explanation of social behavior in terms of
*
psychology."
126 THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE
in human chattels?
If the origin of the institution of slavery has been interpreted
psychologically, so has its extinction. A growing consciousness of
128 THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE
slavery at another?
A culturological explanation of slavery makes the institution
ing the slave. This is possible only when a family group is able to
produce considerably more than it requires for its continued
existence. The efficiency of production is of course determined by
the degree of technological development. Slavery did not exist
during the hundreds of thousands of years before Neolithic times
because culture had not developed sufficiently to make it possible
for a producer to be more than self-supporting. There certainly
would be no point— even if it were possible— in one tribe of
savages enslaving another if the latter required all that they were
able to produce in order to subsist. Consequently, we findno
slavery in early periods of human history, nor, in the modern
world, among peoples on low levels of technological development.
But when in the course of cultural evolution the productivity of
* "Superficially it might appear that the roving life of a Plains Indian tribe
and the frequent contacts with other groups which this entailed would be
likely to focus interest on war, but it need not have done so if the Plains
Indians in general had not been warlike. After all, there was enough food
and other natural resources in the Plains to take care of a much larger popu-
lation than the area supported, and these tribes were not driven into war by
economic needs," The Study oi Man, p. 461.
Professor Lowie, too, thinks that the Plains Indians fought "just for fun":
the "Plains Indians fought not for territorial aggrandizement nor for the vic-
tor's spoils, but above all because fighting was a game worth while because
of the social recognition it brought when played according to the rules/'
Primitive Society, p. 3156.
CULTUROLOGICAL VS. PSYCHOLOGICAL INTERPRETATIONS 131
into our bone and marrow, and thousands of years of peace won't
breed it out of us . . . The miUtary instincts and ideals are as
strong as ever." And the layman sums up his estimate of the
future: "You can't do away with war; it's just human nature."
But is man by nature so pugnacious and militant? Compared
with other animal orders, the Carnivores for example, the Pri-
our bones and marrow" that every nation has to resort to con-
scription. And despite such stinging epithets as "draft dodger,"
the number of men who prefer the degradation of prison to the
glory of war is considerable. Thus it would appear that the lust
or in man in particular.
cause "men like war" is grotesque. They were forced to go, driven
to the slaughter hke sheep. And if any were animated by "the
love of glory" it came to them from propagandists, not from their
innermost selves.
fighting force. It would make more sense to say that it is war that
breeds the martial spirit than to argue that pugnacious instincts
cause wars.
To be sure, there would be no wars if there were no people-
human organisms with their hungers and fears, hopes and inertia
—to fight them. But to explain warfare in terms of psychology is
come, if it ever does, not because we shall have bred out the
134 THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE
ing father, and also wdth the unrepentant parricide. The hated
Jew is not really a person but a myth: he is "castrated" and
feminine and yet exceedingly dangerous and over-sexed, a symbol
at once of the id and of the super-ego. The Negro, according to
one psychoanalytic interpretation, represents the nocturnal, sexual
father, whom the son wishes to castrate— hence the castrative
aspects of lynching. Anti-Negro man-hunts resemble the hunting
of animals in groups, both phenomena being derived from the
banding together of the sons against the primal father.
that Chinese music has one form and style because of certain
biological characters of the Chinese whereas the peculiar bio-
traditions or cultures, Ci, C2, C3, C4 . . . On. Let us set forth our
argument in a series of formulas.
OxC^-
Hv
CULTUROLOGICAL VS. PSYCHOLOGICAL INTERPRETATIONS 139
actions of the human organism; and Ci, C2, C3, C4, for types of
musical culture. The musical behavior in any particular instance
is, of course, a compound made up of two distinct elements, the
Ci >Mi
C, > M3
Cs >M,
C, > M4
any individual speaking it; it comes to each person from the out-
side. It seizes upon the human organism and equips it at birth
of interaction has its own principles and its own laws. To intro-
rate, mating customs, the small town country schools, the rubber
industry, the blacksmith's trade, street-sweeping, tourist camps,
national parks, etc.; or the influence of telescopes and microscopes
upon religious and medical beliefs, etc. Culturology as a practical
art of interpretation is therefore not new or revolutionary by any
means.
Nor is a formulation of the philosophy of the science of culture
a recent achievement. As we have already seen, it was well ex-
vigor.
but one theme runs fairly consistently through most if not all of
it. This is the objection that it is not culture but people who do
things. Again to quote Lynd's pointed and apt phrase, "Culture
does not enamel its fingernails, vote, or believe in capitalism but
people do." This observation is no doubt meant to express scien-
tific realism as well as common sense. Anyone can see for himself
that it is human beings that mark ballots and drop them into
a box.
"Realism" of this sort is simply pathetic. As a matter of fact, it
ways of acting, thinking, and feeling that present the noteworthy prop-
erty of existing outside the individual consciousness.
"These types of conduct or thought are not only external to the in-
dividual but are, moreover, endowed with coercive power, by virtue of
which they impose themselves upon him, independent of his individual
will ."
. . —
Emile Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method.
K uman
two separate and
behavior is, as we have just seen, a
146
CULTURAL DETERMINANTS OF MIND 147
tion of man.
This view is, however, an illusion. Just as scientific analysis
discovers a non-anthropomorphic, culturological determination of
culture, and demonstrates the irrelevance of psychological explana-
tions of cultures, so does it find that many of the elements or
attributes of "the human mind" are not to be explained in terms
and perspective.
In other animal species, the "mind" is a function of the bodily
organs, muscles, etc. Thus the mind of the gorilla differs from that
of the chimpanzee; the mind of a bear differs from that of a
cat or a squirrel. In each case, the minds are functions of their
Chinese is not like the mind of the Sicilians or the Hopi Indians.
But here the differences of mind are not due to differences of
the reacting of the human organism. But we now see that the
specific content of the human mind in any particular expression
speaking here of peoples rather than of individuals— is determined
CULTURAL DETERMINANTS OF MIND 149
The tendencies, emphases, and content that one sees in the overt
behavior of human beings are often not due to innate biological
determination— though such determinations do of course exist-
but to the stimulation of external cultural elements. Much of
what is commonly called "human nature" is merely culture
thrown against a screen of nerves, glands, sense organs, muscles,
etc. We
have a particularly fine example of this illusion, this mis-
150 THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE
* New York. The Sun Dial Press, pp. 432-37. Quoted by permission of
Harper and Brother*;.
CULTURAL DETERMINANTS OF MIND 151
fat purse buys him flunkeys to carry him where his shanks no
longer can; he consumes rich food and golden wine that his
wretched stomach has no hunger for; his weary and lifeless
eyes look out upon the scenery which in
of strange lands for
youth his heart was panting. Then the slow death, prolonged by
costly doctors, and finally the graduate undertakers, the per-
fumed carrion, the suave ushers with palms outspread to left-
wards, the fast motor hearses, and the earth again.
but an illusion. The Wolfes are not describing Man at all, but
Culture.
This is not quibbling in any way. The distinction is real, pro-
and be conscious of the immortal sea and earth" were it not for
152 THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE
the culture which holds him in its grip and compels him to waste
his precious life selling real estate, cheating rivals? Wolfe is de-
The Navajos will not eat fish. We will not eat dogs. The eating of
human flesh is regarded with extreme revulsion by some peoples;
to others it is the feast supreme. It would be hard indeed to name
an edible substance that is regarded everywhere as food. The
aversions and loathings likewise vary. What then can we attribute
to "human nature?" Virtually nothing. What a people likes or
loathes is not determined by the innate attractions and repulsions
of the human organism. On the contrary, the preferences and
aversions are produced within the human organism by a culture
acting upon it from the outside. Why cultures vary in this respect
is another matter; we shall turn to it later on.
do not kiss at all. Some rub noses. Others merely sniff the back
of the neck of children. And in some societies a parent or elder
relative will spit in the face of a child; saliva is here regarded as
a magical substance and this act is therefore a sort of blessing.
Among some peoples adult males kiss each other. I once witnessed
greetings between men in one of the isolated valleys of the Cau-
casus mountains. They kissed each other fervently, pushing aside
a thick growth of whiskers to reach the lips. Other peoples re-
gard kissing among adult males as unmanly. Where does human
nature enter this picture? It does not enter at all. The attitude
toward kissing as well as its practice is not determined by innate
desires of the human organism. If this were so, kissing behavior
would be uniform throughout the world as the organism is uni-
form. But this is not the case. Behavior varies because cultures
differ. You will do, or taboo, what your culture calls for.
with his sister. Some peoples regard polygamy with aversion, even
became equivalent to incest and the thought of such marriage was defined as
'psychic incest.' Around the year 1850, when Lord Russell's bill for the
. . .
repeal of the law against such marriages was being debated, countless sermons
were preached and thousands of pamphlets and letters were printed protesting
against repeal:
"'It would be difEcult (says Lccky) to overstate the extravagance of
language employed. One gentleman (Lord Hatherley), who had been
. . .
Lord Chancellor of England, more than once declared that if marriage with a
deceased wife's sister ever became legal "the decadence of England was in-
evitable," and that for his part he would rather see 300,000 Frenchmen
CULTURAL DETERMINANTS OF MIND 155
tures it is the sister rather than the mother who becomes the
primary object of incestuous desire. The definition of incest, and
consequently one's attitude toward sexual union with cross or
parallel, first or second, cousins, varies with the culture as we
shall see later on.
landed on the British coasts,' " (Wm. I. Thomas, Primitive Behavior, pp.
196-97).
Contrast this with the command, in Deuteronomy (XXV: 5-12) that a
man shall marry his deceased brother's wife. Should he refuse, the woman
shall disgrace him publicly, taking off his sandal "in the presence of the elders
. .and spit in his face." Note, also, that Onan was killed by the Lord for
.
avoiding his duty to his deceased brother's widow (Genesis XXXVIII: 6-n).
156 THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE
structure and has no origin or significance apart from it. But our
conscience has a sociocultural origin; it is the operation of supra-
individual cultural forces upon the individual organism. Con-
science is merely our experience and our awareness of the opera-
tion of certain sociocultural forces upon us. Right and wrong are
matters of sociocultural genesis; they are originated by social
systems, not by individual biological organisms. Behavior that is
It does this by first defining the good and the bad specifically, and
directed this way and that by impulses external to it. These im-
pulses are received by a mechanism and are then transmitted to
motors, rudders, etc. This receiving and behavior-controlling mech-
anism is analogous to conscience.
That conscience is a cultural variable rather than a psychoso-
matic constant is made apparent of course by a consideration of
the great variation of definition of rights and wrongs among the
various cultures of the world. What is right in one culture may
be wrong in another. This follows from the fact that an act that
will promote the general welfare in one set of circumstances may
injure it in another. Thus we find great variety of ethical definition
and conduct in the face of a common and uniform human
organism, and must conclude therefore that the determination
of right and wrong is social and cultural rather than individual
and psychological. But the interpretation of conscience, rather
than custom and mores, in terms of social and cultural forces
158 THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE
lie beyond the ken of all but the most scientifically sophisticated.
To those who believe that man makes his culture and controls its
* "Religion teaches the laboringman and the artisan to carry out honestly
and fairly equitable agreements freely entered into; never to injure the
all
Leo XII's Encyclical on Condition of Labor, May 15, 1891, The O&cial
Catholic Year Book Anno Domini, 1928), p. 540.
:
prose all his life without realizing it, the peoples of the Western
world, too, have long been unconscious of much of the structure
Human
Behavior
"it is the individual who is responsible, in the last analysis, for all
additions to culture"® (emphasis ours). Hallowell finds the con-
ception of cultural influence unrealistic; "In the last analysis,"
he says, "it is individuals who respond to and influence one
another."* Both Goldenweiser and Malinowski place the indi-
vidual "at the beginning and the end" of the sociocultural pro-
cess.^" And, finally, we cite Sapir's categorical dictum: "It is always
the individual that really thinks and acts and dreams and re-
volts." * "
The import of the foregoing is clear. It is the individual who
"is responsible" for culture change; it is the individual who really
does things; every cultural element has its beginning in the creative
act of an individual mind, etc., etc. It would appear from our
quotations that their authors feel that they are expressing a fun-
damental proposition and point of view. Nearly all of them use
the phrase "in the last analysis" in setting forth their position.
man, human individuals, who chop down trees, build houses, pass
laws, write sonnets, worship gods, etc. But we have become a bit
wary of the self-evident and the obvious: anyone can see for him-
self that it is the sun, not the earth, that moves. But, thanks
to Copernicus, we now know better.
Obvious and self-evident though the proposition that culture
is made by individuals may appear to be, we must reject it as a
ture has issued from the mind of man— of men, women, and chil-
dren—and therefore if we are to understand culture and explain
its content and course of change, we must do so in terms of the
individual.
It is obvious, of course, that culture has emanated from the
organisms of human beings: without the human species there
last analysis," it is the individual who "is responsible for all addi-
168 THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE
But the scholars that we have just quoted are doing more than to
give utterance to these obvious and trite commonplaces. They are
asserting that the individual is a prime mover, a determinant;
mulation took place where and when it did because the circum-
stances of culture growth and history brought together the
elements requisite to this synthesis at a particular time and place.
We can trace the growth of these elements through time and
place. Thus we explain the occurrence of this significant event
culturologically. And, moreover, we explain the behavior of New-
ton by showing that the formulation of these laws was the
response of his organism to certain cultural stimuli. We know
virtually nothing about his nervous system directly; we make in-
ferences concerning it on the basis of the effect of cultural
stimuli upon him. In short, we know his mentality only through
his culture. But Newton was also much concerned with theology
coverers are merely the loci and the vehicles of expression of this
process.
To return now to Sapir's dictum that "it is always the indi-
vidual who really thinks and acts and dreams and revolts." This
statement does not merely distort the picture of human behavior;
it inverts it. If he had said it is always the individual that sleeps
and yawns and hears and breathes, we would offer no objection,
for these activities are functions of individual organisms; there is
argued that the words think, feel, dream, etc., are properly ap- ^-^q
plicable to neuro-sensory-muscular-etcetera systems only. If this
ruling be accepted, then it is true of course that it is always the
individual organism that thinks, feels, and acts. But it was not to
set forth this tautology that Sapir took such pains and emphasis
of expression. It was his purpose to present the individual as a
prime mover, as an initiator and determinant of a process. And
it is this proposition that we reject.
pp. 117-18.
172 THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE
the form and content of the response merely by citing the bio-
logicalorganism that does the responding. Whether a person
believes that a fever has been caused by bacteria or the violation
of a taboo is a matter that is not made intelligible by invoking
the individual organism who ''always does" the believing. The
organism is the same in both cases.
Thus we are left in the position where we have designated
certain psycho-biological processes "thinking," "feeling," or "act-
ing," but where we cannot explain these processes at all merely
by considering them as individual phenomena. "It is always the
individual who thinks, etc.," tells us, therefore, nothing of any
significance. What does the individual think, and why does he
think thus and so? This what we want to know, and the con-
is
material from the outside in a purely passive way, like a cup into
which coffee is poured, nor does it reflect this material like a
and negotiates relations with other nations. The life of the nation
is thus regulated and controlled by a relatively small segment. The
176 THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE
cedent and concomitant events that we may term "causes." The human
organism is constantly organizing and synthesizing these causative factors on
the one hand, and expressing the resultant behavior overtly on the other.
When causative factors for and against a given course of action are evenly
balanced, we call this "indecision": "I can't make up my mind whether to
play golf or to mow the lawn." When one set of causative factors outweighs
another, we call it "choice" or "decision": I decide to play golf. "Free will
and choice" is merely the way in which we experience tliis preponderance of
one factor or set of factors over another. Not realizing what lies back of this
experiencewe can belieye that it is our own doing and hence call it choice
and Free WilL
CULTURAL DETERMINANTS OF MIND 177
people rule. As long as the electorate believes that it does the
governing, i.e., as long as itsmembers are unaware of the genesis
of the social forces that impinge upon them individually from
the outside, just so long will the actual governing mechanism
have a freer hand. And, if misfortune overtakes the nation, the
illusion of democracy lays the blame upon the people, which is
needed.
If democracies work under the illusion that the people rule,
the "dictatorship of the proletariat" is probably an even greater
illusion, assuming of course that a considerable number of people
do actually take this formula at its face value. A dictatorship is
"the people" rule; not all the people, but only a particular class
—a "chosen people." The course of social evolution in recent
years has shown how unrealistic this slogan is. "The dictatorship
of the proletariat" is both a logical and a sociological contradic-
tion of terms.
held and wielded by certain cultural elements and forces that are
moving in the direction of profound change. Arkwright, Newton,
Darwin, Jefferson, Lobachewsky, Lenin, Watt, were revolution-
ists as well as those nameless men and women who served as the
biological media for such cultural advances as agriculture, metal-
tem and urge reforms. But, held fast by both sets of forces,
they can neither relinquish the past nor give themselves up to
revolutionary advance. They wish to keep the old system but
without its inherent defects. They desire the new but without
the trauma of birth. They lie becalmed midway between the poles
of the magnet. They have neither a positive nor a negative
charge; they are the human neutrons of the culture process.
One might think that in dreaming, if anywhere, one might find
—
event or process that we label "dreaming" is, like the events called
"thinking," "feeling," and "acting," a function of a system in
which the individual is but a component part: a sociocultural
system.
'
Thus, the whole concept of the individual, the individual
human organism, is profoundly altered by culturological inter-
pretation. Instead of regarding the individual as a First Cause,
as a prime mover, as the initiator and determinant of the culture
process, as one who creates culture by acts of mind,* as one who
is responsible for all additions to culture, etc., etc., we now see
him as a component part, and a tiny and relatively insignificant
numerable individuals at any one time and extends back into the
remote past as well. We see culture as a vast continuum, a stream
of cultural elements— of language, tools, utensils, beliefs, cus-
toms, and attitudes— that flows down through time. Culture was
of course brought into existence by man—by countless human
individuals— and it could not continue without them. But, we do
not need to consider man at all— as a species, race or individual
—in an explanation of culture change. For purposes of scientific
interpretation, the culture process may be regarded as a thing sui
generis; culture is explainable in terms of culture. In this great
sociocultural system, and from the standpoint of an interpreta-
tion of this system, the individual is (i) a catalytic agent that
makes the interactive culture process possible, and (2) a medium
of expression of the culture process.
he cannot think ought else than what the influences of his social
environment concentrating upon his brain necessitate." ^* Emile
Durkheim and his co-workers, too, showed clearly how, on the
one hand, culture is an extra-somatic tradition that can be ex-
plained in terms of own interactive elements and processes and
its
He will suspect certain persons of the black art and fear them; he
will take certain precautions to safeguard himself from them; and
he will occupy himself with the detection, punishment or eradica-
tion of witches, all in a manner prescribed by his culture. What
meaning could be attached to the assertion that "it is always the
individual who believes in, fears, and contends with, witches?"
Simply that the individual organism responds to certain cultural
elements as external stimuli. But we are able to give an account
would be more realistic to say that his thinking and feeling are
things that the culture does to the individual than to say that
they are things that he does. The individual's thinking, feeling,
by continuous ."
reality as represented fields . . (1934, p- 65). Before, or
186 THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE
ganisms." What they said, however, was "it is not the individual
but the group who thinks." This was rejected not only as false
psychologically but as mystical as well.
Another defect of the "group mind" theorists was that they
did not properly locate and define the supra-individual deter-
outside of, the science of culture, we may say, students conceive of human
cultural reality as a series of material points, i.e., individuals. After, or within,
the science of culture, human reality is seen to consist of a network of socio-
cultural relations, with the individual a function of the system as a whole.
Karl Marx saw this clearly over a hundred years ago when he wrote, in the
Sixth Thesis on Feuerbach: "The essence of man is no abstraction inherent
ineach separate individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of social lehtions"
(emphasis ours). As the science of culture grows and extends its influence
among students of human behavior, this view, this understanding, will become
commonplace.
CULTURAL DETERMINANTS OF MIND 187
pretation. But science had not advanced far enough at that time
to elevate them above the sociological level to that of culturology.
always the individual who really thinks and acts," etc., is definitely
ture Growth.
of the time of Pericles were two grades higher than the Enghsh,
who in turn were two grades higher than the African Negro.^
The scientific prestige of Galton and the scholarly character of
his work did much no doubt to confirm many in their belief not
only that civilization has been the work of geniuses but that cer-
tain races aremore richly endowed than others. In short, Galton
provided a simple, scholarly, "scientific"— it was supported with
statistics!— and authoritative theory with which one could explain
the histories of nations and the development of civilization.
One of the first of modern scholars to challenge the Great Man
theory was Herbert Spencer. In The Study of Sociology (1873)
such a mystery. Blow must follow blow so fast that no cooling can
occur in the intervals. Then the mass of the nation grows incan-
descent, and may continue to glow by pure inertia long after
the originators of its internal movement have passed away. We
often hear surprise expressed that in these high tides of human
affairs not only the people should be filled with stronger life.
GENIUS: ITS CAUSES AND INCIDENCE 193
with lust of power and conquest and thus transform him into a
humanitarian." In a different context, Goldenweiser says that
history "abounds in examples of periods of precipitated change
194 THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE
the genius must come first. Obviously, some men are distinguished
markedly from others, and their lives and deeds are especially
significant. Obvious also is the influence of society upon excep-
from a sow's ear. All of the sciences of man will freely grant, if
from our calculations. We may, then, rewrite our formula for the
behavior of any people with reference to the behavior of others
as follows: C
>B, culture produces, or determines, behavior;
the behavior of a people is determined by its culture. Or,
B = f{C): behavior is a function of culture. Variations in be-
havioramong peoples are functions of variations in culture: Vb =
f(Vc). The relationship between the human biological factor in
the mass and the extra-somatic cultural factor is thus made clear.
Where then does society enter this picture?
Why does one people have one form of society whereas another
has a different form? The psychologist cannot account for this
point in saying that many a genius is born, lives and dies unrecog-
nized. One may well say that many a person of very superior
native endowment lives and dies without full realization of his
potentialities and without achieving recognition or fame. But for
and then suddenly burst forth with vigorous activity and growth.
An invention or discovery such as metallurgy, agriculture, the
domestication of animals, the keystone arch, the alphabet, micro-
scope, steam engine, etc., may inaugurate an era of rapid change
and progress.
But are not inventions the work of genius? The answer is of
course "Yes," by genius you mean "someone who makes a
if
eyes are put into awls and they become needles, clay is first sun-
this time, suddenly and almost overnight was achieved by not one
individual or two, but by awhole handful?
William James would say that these achievements were the
work of genius and that the appearance of a man of genius is
fortuitous. But if the appearance of a single genius is a chance
occurrence, "the unlikeliness of the concourse of genius about a
time is far greater." Yet we have many such "concourses": any-
where from two to seven or more persons achieving independently
the same important result. This places a heavy burden upon the
theory of probability, a burden that is increased when we think
of the ages of the men at the time of their noteworthy achieve-
ment. Thus, in a single year a number of geniuses of v^dely
varying ages all light their lamps at the same time! Even if we
had no other explanation at all for this phenomenon than
"chance" one wonders why anyone would want to dignify this
feeble gesture by calling it a scientific explanation.
Culturological theory provides a simple explanation of this re-
ments of this process interact upon one another: tool upon tool,
tool upon belief, belief upon custom, custom upon custom, etc.
In this interactive process new combinations of elements are
formed, new syntheses achieved. It goes without saying that a
given synthesis cannot be achieved until the requisite elements
for the synthesis are available: the steam engine could not have
been invented in the Neolithic age. It is not quite so obvious,
perhaps, that when the elements necessary for a given synthesis
are present in a process of interaction that the synthesis will take
place. The lay mind rebels at this notion of a deterministic process
This goes without saying; culture does not and cannot exist with-
out human beings. But, we add nothing to an explanation oi this
culture process by including man in our calculations. Conjugations
of verbs could not take place without human organisms, but do
we need to introduce metabolism and respiration into philological
science? Tractors would not have replaced horses on American
farms unless man had been there to effect the change. But in
a statement of the relationship between tractors and horses, the
human organism may be— and should be— completely disregarded.
But what about genius.^ Granting that inventions and discoveries
are cultural events, does not a great event require a great man?
Could an epoch-making invention or discovery take place without
the action of a person of exceptional natural endowment?
The culturologist, like the biologist, assumes that human or-
ganisms vary both qualitatively and quantitatively. One person's
feet, liver, brain, etc., may be larger or smaller than another's;
But does not the fact that the laws of motion and the calculus
were synthesized in Newton's brain prove that he was a genius?
At last we have come to the crucial point: are we to define a
genius psychologically or culturologically?
Is a genius a person of exceptional native endowment? * Or,
is he an individual in whose neuro-sensory-glandular-etc. system
an important synthesis of cultural events has taken place?
To assume that a person who
made a significant achieve-
has
ment has superior native ability we have seen, merely an
is, as
does not lead to the conclusion that great abiht>-, native or ac-
quired, is alwavs necessar)-. On the contrar;-, many seem to need
a piece of glass that changes the course of light passing through it.
isotope, and "for this exciting discover^-." sa^'S Hecht, '"Urey.- v.-as
that a light isotope would diffuse faster than a heavy one was not
original; it had been tried out experimentally by Aston with posi-
tive results. What then did Urey contribute?
Again, let us repeat, we are not minimizing the inborn capa-
cities of Dr. Urey. He may have a superlatively fine organization of
ner\'es, glands, and sense organs. We have, however, implied that
intelligence of a high order was not essential to the isolation of
heavy hydrogen, and we now wish to make this implied conclu-
sion explicit and unequivocal: it could have been achieved by a
very ordinary intelligence. As a matter of fact, we believe that many
a household problem— such as removing a stain from a dress or
'^
you can go no further. Realistic representation of natural objects
in painting and sculpture cannot be developed beyond a certain
point; and symbolic representation, too, seems to have its limits.
The art of divination based upon the assumption that the future
can be read in the liver may be developed considerably, as the
little Babylonian clay models, with various sections marked off,
geometry upon the basis of the axioms of Euclid had hmits that
were inherent in the system or pattern. A certain musical pattern
* Even so, there is apt to be room for but one genius only. It was Darwin,
—
not Wallace, who won recognition and fame became the capstone of the
edifice —
even though the latter had worked out the same theory and at the
same time.
2T8 THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE
right time.
The cultural milieu into which an individual is thrust at birth
where life is hard and hazardous, where a keen eye and a quick
where hard drinking and harder fighting
trigger finger are prized,
or not depends upon the soil and climate of the cultural habitat.
does not follow from this that we must reckon with the human
organism in an analysis of culture change. To interpret the culture
process without taking the human organism into account is
both average and range are increased instead of one only. This
means that the probability of an invention or discovery taking
place at a certain time will vary as the average or range of mental
ability of the population varies, other factors remaining constant.
Thus, in a given cultural situation a certain invention or discovery
—a steam engine, the alphabet, the cellular basis of life— would be
more likely to occur in a population with a high average of intel-
are not available, the advancing culture process will in time bring
the possibility of a significant invention or discovery within the
range of men with much less ability. Incidents of this sort have
no doubt occurred many times in the past. We believe we are
warranted, on the basis of our premises and analysis, in making
the assertion that all of the great discoveries or inventions that
have ever occurred could have been achieved v^athout one single
"genius," i.e., without the aid of anyone above the present average
of intelligence. In short, that our civilization could have been
achieved by a race whose maximum intelligence was equivalent
to our average. It would merely have taken longer, that is all,
longer for the cultural process to reach the point where syntheses
become possible to human nervous systems.
Actually, however, we have good reasons for believing that the
factor of mental ability has remained fairly constant throughout
the last hundred thousand years or so. At any rate, we have no
evidence of a significant increase in mental ability during this
time.*
Darwin and Lyell cite the large scale and long continued extermination of
independent minds and courageous spirits by the Holy Inquisition, as evidence
of deterioration.
Speaking of the Inquisition Darwin wrote: "In Spain alone some of the
best —
men those who doubted and questioned, and without doubting there
—
can be no progress were eliminated during three centuries at the rate of a
thousand a year. The evil which the CathoHc Church has thus effected is
incalculable . ."{The Descent of Man, Ch. III). Lyell observes that "the
.
part of the population all men of genius and may doom them by thou-
. . .
today, not only by laymen but by eminent anthropologists as well. Thus the
late Edward Sapir wrote: "As the social units grow larger and larger, the
probabilities of the occurrence of striking and influential personalities grow
vastly. Hence it is that the determining influence of individuals is more
222 THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE
some regions was the staple article of diet. There are two kinds of manioc:
bitter and sweet. The bitterness of the former is due to the presence of
hydrocyanic acid, a deadly poison. In some regions, because of depradations
of ants, only the bitter manioc can be grown. The Indians discovered a way
to remove the poisonous element by leaching the meal ground from the roots.
After the acid has been volatilized, dissolved and expressed, the meal is both
edible and nutritious. How the aborigines discovered that this could be done
and how they perfected this technique is a matter of wonder. Ignorant of
chemistr}', knowing that initially the plant was deadly, and with minds full
of magic, myth, and superstition, one wonders how they ever accomplished
so difficult a feat. Perhaps if we had a complete record of the discovery it
might, and probably would, seem simpler. Even so, we may, I think, regard
it as one of the most difficult, though not of course the greatest, inventions
in history.
GENIUS: ITS CAUSES AND INCIDENCE 223
of the people were wholly illiterate and hence cut off from a large
part of the cultural tradition accessible to Newton. And in the
cannot tell reliably which is which in many instances. But the psy-
why and when a genius will appear; it makes clear what the ele-
ments and processes are that produce a genius, and how it all
comes about. It might be noted also that the culturologist knows
quite as much about the neuroanatomy of genius as the psy-
chologist does, namely, virtually nothing.
Conclusion 2. In the operation of the man-culture process, the
factor of innate mental ability may have, and probably has, in-
creased since man acquired the faculty of articulate speech. It
But, during the last hundred, or even the last fifty thousand years,
has developed and advanced. This is due not only to the increase
in magnitude of the cultural factor, both absolutely and relatively.
GENIUS: ITS CAUSES AND INCIDENCE 227
but also to the fact that differentiation of social structure, the
formation of classes each with its own function, has cut off an
increasingnumber of organisms of exceptional natural endow-
ment from the possibility of important achievement: the illiterate
peasant cannot invent the calculus no matter how excellent his
cerebral cortex may be.
Conclusion 3. The rate of occurrence of inventions and dis-
* We say "significant factors in the course of history" rather than use the
common phrase "changed the course of history." The latter phrase is an-
228 THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE
history. But we are not at all willing to accept the inferences that
course" of history.
More than this: it need not be even a half-wit who deflects the
course of history; any accident from any cause can accomplish this.
A rat might infect a Tsar with typhus, a squirrel might short-
make sense to say that a thundershower "changes the course of the weather."
The thundershower is an integral part of the meteorological process. Neither
does the Great Man "change the course of history" from the outside; he is
an integral part of it.
GENIUS: ITS CAUSES AND INCIDENCE 229
Darwin tells us in his autobiographic sketch that Captain Fitz-
Roy, who was "an ardent disciple" of the mystic and physiog-
nomist J.
K. Lavater, almost refused to allow Darwin to join the
expedition of the Beagle because he did not like the shape of
Darwin's nose! "He doubted," wrote Darwin, "whether any one
with my nose could possess sufficient energy and determination
for the voyage." Had Fitz-Roy's phrenology prevailed, the whole
course of the history of science would have been different. As the
nursery rhyme about the chain of events set in motion by the loss
of a horseshoe nail makes clear, great consequences may flow from
occurrences otherwise trivial and insignificant. To have affected
the course of history is, therefore, no proof of genius or colossal
ability. The half-wit whose blunder kills Caesar is as significant
the same today had it not been for Napoleon. Both disputants are
wholly justified in their claims. Unfortunately, however, they are
as a genius than one of lesser ability. But other factors are not
constant; they are so variable, in fact, that a favorably situated
individual of meager abilitymay have much more chance of be-
coming a "genius" than one of vastly superior native endowment
but in a disadvantageous position culturally. All we can say then
is that in the Jong run, not in any particular instance, the genius is
rich and varied, the current quick and the rate of interaction rapid,
geniuses will be frequent and abundant. Genius occurs readily at
peaks of cultural development, rarely on the slopes or plateaus.
One soil or climate will foster and bring forth genius, another
232 THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE
IKHNATON:
The Great Man vs. The Culture Process
233
234 THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE
comes not only flesh (John I, 14), but earth and sky and all
creation. Let there be Light and there was light. The external
mind; and his thoughts, like his plans for buildings and works of
art, needed but to be expressed in spoken words to take concrete
^
fomi as material realities."
they not obviously made by him, and is it not plain that they
are merely the expressions of his thought and wish? So runs the
tropism of folk-thought.
But all men are not equal, even on the level of primitive society.
Some are better shamans than others; they have more "power."
On higher cultural levels we find chiefs and priests; then kings
and emperors, popes and potentates. The god Ptah in the persons
of artists, scientists, lawgivers, rulers, generals, prophets, and in-
ventors spews out new tools and devices, new codes and institu-
tions, new ways of life. Cultural advance is but the work of a
relatively few gifted individuals. And as culture advances, the
IKHNATON 235
II
true of course that the social scientist does not have laboratories—
like the physicist. But he does have laboratories in another, and in
236 THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE
some culture, at some time and place. The meager yield of social
science is not due to lack of laboratories but rather from not
knowing how to use the resources at its disposal.
Ancient Egypt is an excellent laboratory in which the social
scientist can test many theories. It was quite isolated, being cut
off from its neighbors by deserts, mountains, and the sea. It was
therefore relatively undisturbed by outside influence. We have a
fairlygood record, both archeologic and documentary, of history
and cultural development of Egypt for tens of centuries. The
land was richly endowed— as contrasted, let us say, with Australia
—and so we can observe the growth of culture from a fairly
Ill
membered that the king had much foreign blood in his veins."
This helped him to stand out amongst the "superstitious
Egyptians [who were] ever lacking in originality." Moret, too,
comments on "the mixture of Aryan blood . . . further com-
plicated by the Syrian descent of Tii" in Ikhnaton's racial back-
ground.^'*
240 THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE
IV
Before turning to our laboratory proper, namely, the culture
history of Eg^-pt as we know it through archeological research and
documentary studies, let us consider briefly what we know about
the evolution of culture in general and the nature of societies
And, finally, language and speech made it possible for man to ac-
cumulate experience and knowledge in a form that made easy
transmission and maximum use possible.
As we have already seen, it was the ability to use symbols — of
which articulate speech is the most important and characteristic
form of expression— that made the origin and subsequent growth
of culture possible. But symbols did not provide the motive power
for cultural advance. This could only come from energy, energy
in the sense in which the physicist uses this term. All life is a
matter of energy transformations. Organisms enable themselves
to live by capturing free energy from non-living systems and by
incorporating it into their own living systems. Culture is man's
IKHNATON 241
* See Lewis
H. Morgan, Ancient Society, (New York, 1877), p. 6, for the
classic statement of this thesis. Of this distinction A. R. Radchffe-Brown
writes: "Indeed we may agree with Morgan that the passage from lower
forms of civihzation to higher forms such as our own was essentially a passage
from society based on kinship to the state based on political organization,"
"Some Problems of Bantu Sociology," (Bantu Studies, October, 1922), pp.
40-41.
242 THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE
church and state worked hand in hand. The church held vast
to worship as one pleased— than there ever had been under the
old regime. Why then the great outcry from the clergy— Catholic,
Protestant, and Jewish alike? The answer is plain: the political
functions of the church had been done away with and their sources
of income virtually shut off.* The Bolsheviki had tried to abolish
the ecclesiastical arm of the integrative mechanism of the new
society. It is interesting to note, however, that the church has
been brought back to Russia in recent years and established once
again as an integrative mechanism. The church today is "the most
powerful unifying thing in Soviet civil life," the Metropolitan
Benjamin, titular head of the Russian Orthodox church in
America, said recently while on his way to Moscow. It is interest-
V
Let us turn now to the culture history of Egypt and trace
the relationship between church and state, priest and king,
through the centuries.
But the basis for a rise to power of the priesthoods had long
existed in their possession of lands which were under their control
and whose produce was appropriated by them. In addition to this
they received frequent contributions from the royal treasury. The
temples were, of course, not subject to taxation. They were, there-
fore, in a favorable position to increase their wealth through
accumulation and expansion, and to grow in political power as
who completed the expulsion of the Hyksos about 1546 B.C.), the
priesthoods had grown to considerable power and affluence. Says
Breasted:
they gain more and more political power; while the growing
wealth of the temples demands for its proper administration
a veritable army of temple officials of all sorts, who were un-
kno\\n to the old days of simplicity.^^
Not only were the temples becoming wealthier and the priest-
was put upon the throne "by a highly dramatic coup d'etat" of
the priests of Amon and in the temple of that god. In the
struggles for the throne which followed, between Thutmose III
and his half-brother Thutmose II, and between Thutmose III and
his half-sister wife, Hatshepsut, the priests played an important
part. Originally Icept in the background by Thutmose III,
was both High Priest of Amon and vizier. "He thus united in his
person all the power of the administrative government with that
of the strong priestly party." "
These events took place about a century before the time of
IKHNATON 247
Ikhnaton. During the reign of Amenhotep III, the father of Ikhna-
ton, one of the High Priests of Amon, Ptahmose by name, was
also one of the two grand viziers of the kingdom. Another held
the ofEce of chief treasurer. During this reign also the priests of
Amon acquired some, if not complete control over the gold pro-
duced in the Sudan. In the use of spells used in mortuary rites
that "it is not impossible that the increased power of the priest-
VI
Amenhotep IV was born about 1409 b.c, the son of
Amenhotep III and his Queen Tiy. Estimates of his age at the
time he ascended the throne as coregent with his father vary
from nine to twenty-four years. For the first years of his reign,
according to those who believe he ascended to the throne as a
child, the affairs of state were managed by his mother. "To all
intents and purposes, Ti ruled Egypt for several years after her
husband's death," according to Wallis Budge, "and the boy king
248 THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE
did for a time at least what his mother told him." Glanville also
believes that "Tiy clearly controlled him to some extent until he
left Thebes." Although Amenhotep III did not die until about
ment. The fact that his name was chiselled out of inscriptions
view.^°
Very early in the reign of Amenhotep IV the worship of a
supreme god, Aton, was inaugurated. Aton was none other than
the old sun-god, Re, in a new role. Other gods were tolerated for
a while, but with the growing resentment of the priesthoods,
particularly that of Amon, Amenhotep IV built a new city-
capital, Akhetaten, for his god, changed his name to Ikhnaton,*
closed the temples of the other gods, dispossessed the priesthoods,
confiscated their lands and revenues, and set to work to establish
his new regime, both religious and political. All this had taken
place by the sixth year of his reign.
Ikhnaton's reign was full of troubles as may well be imagined.
to Aton" (Steindorff and Seele); the old god gives way to the new in this
change of names.
IKHNATON 249
mother, Tiy, who resided in Thebes, visited Akhetaten, at which
time she may have urged action against the revolting vassals and
a moderation of policy at home, perhaps even compromise with
a
the priests of Aton. At any rate, we find Ikhnaton making a feeble
gesture against the rebels abroad and initiating conciliatory meas-
ures at home. Smenkhkara, the "beloved" of Ikhnaton and now
coregent with him, was sent to Thebes to effect a reconciliation
with the priests of Amon.^^ But dissensionnow broke out in the
king's own household. Although Ikhnaton seems to have been
willing to compromise, Nefertiti, his wife, was not. At any rate,
she fell into disgrace, or was estranged from her husband, and
retired with some powerful followers to the north end of the city
where she built a palace for herself. The political structure was
disintegrating at home and abroad,
Ikhnaton died about 1369 b.c. at Akhetaten; Smenkhkara, the
coregent, died at almost the same time in Thebes. Tutankhaten, a
boy of nine, ascended the throne. By now the priestly party was
growing rapidly in strength. The new king soon realized that he
could stay on the throne only if he "came to terms with the sup-
porters of the traditional faith," i.e., the priests. He was obliged
to abandon his capital at Akhetaten and move his court to Thebes.
He was compelled to abandon the heresy of Ikhnaton and to
"acknowledge himself officially as an adherent of . . . Amun,"
Accordingly, he changed his name to Tutankhamun, "Beautiful
in Life is Amun." In a manifesto he tells of his devotion to "his
father Amun" and of his benefactions to his priests. He "made
monuments for all the gods, fashioning their statues of pure
d/am-gold, restoring their sanctuaries . . . providing them with
perpetual endowments, investing them with divine offerings for
the daily service, and supplying their provisions on earth." ^^ The
triumph of the priests was virtually complete.
the old gods especially to the patron divinity of his native city
and to Amun," ^^was thus acceptable to the priests of Amon.
He
With their backing and that of the army which was already under
that this was not the case, that this assumption was born of an
error of translation.^^ i
VII
With the death of Merenptah, son of Ramesses II, the land fell
temples of Egypt:
while in Syria, Kush and Egypt they owned in all one hundred
and sixty nine towns. When we remember that all this vast
property in a land of less than ten thousand square miles and
some five or six million inhabitants was entirely exempt from
taxation * it will be seen that the economic equilibrium of the
state was endangered.^^
VIII
* See Bruce Barton, The Man Nobody Knows, wherein Jesus is pictured
as "a joyous, ripping good fellow, the perfect image of a 'go-getter' from the
IKHNATON 255
Jazztown Rotary Club," (Beard, The Rise of American Civilization, II, one
vol. ed., New York, 1930), p. 729.
* Cf. Living Philosophies (New York, 1931), p. 44. Millikan's god seems
conviction. Tliere was thus created for the first time a realm of
universal values, and in conceiving the divine ruler of such a realm
^^
the Egyptians were moving on the road towards monotheism."
But the conception of a supreme deity whose rule extended to
the farthest reaches of the earth and embraced all lands and
naton took the last logical step and attempted to abolish all other
gods but Aton. As Breasted says, "this whole monotheistic move-
ment is the culmination of the ancient recognition of a moral
order by the Egyptian thinkers of the Pyramid Age and their
creation of a realm of universal ethical values." Aton, the Disk
god, was of sufficient importance during the reign of Ikhnaton's
father to have a temple erected in his honor at Thebes. Even
"the full name of the new deity, 'Re-Horus-of-the-Horizon who
rejoices in his name of Shu who is the Disk' is to be ascribed not
IKHNATON 257
of many authors (who, however, may know full well that the
addresses of modern heads of state are frequently written by
others), was remarkable but unoriginal, according to Peet. Two
architects of Amenhotep III, he writes, had already dedicated a
hymn to the sun-god which was "a. very close anticipation of Ikh-
naton's hymn to the disk . . . ; the ideas . . . [expressed in the
latter] are not at all new, nor indeed are the phrases in which these
ideas are embodied." Nor was Ikhnaton the first to erase the names
of his rivals from public monuments; this was done freely in the
feud of the Thutmosids.^^
The struggle with the priesthoods was also acute when Ikhnaton
ascended the throne. We have already seen that the priests of
everv' other class in society. When their interests diverge they fight
IX
the life of a great nation stand still, must history mark time, until
boy kings grow up? It is rather generally admitted that Tutank-
hamun was but a boy of nine when he ascended the throne.
Newberry believes that Ay "must have been the dominating
personality in Egypt's political affairs" at this time. Steindorff and
Seele assume that the boy king was "completely under the control
upon
of Eye," and Pendlebury believes that Nefertiti's influence
Tutankhamun must have kept him faithful to the new religion
while she lived. If we can have a boy king, with actual rule by
others, in the case of Tutankhamun, why not with Ikhnaton?
In this connection we may recall that Louis XIII of France
ascended the throne at the age of nine years, Louis XIV at only
five. Peter the Great came to the throne when he was ten;
Charles XII of Sweden, at the ripe old age of fifteen.*®
upon Meryra, who had become High Priest of Aton, "on some
occasion when he had been particularly successful in collecting the
." "Abundant are the rewards/'
yearly dues of the temple . .
X
Every effort has been made to extoll the originality and
uniqueness of Ikhnaton and to emphasize his importance as an
He is but a boy when
individual in the culture history of Egypt.
he ascends the throne, and only an adolescent when the "revolu-
tion" gets well under way. "Still, when one calls to mind the
IKhNATON 263
amined the skeletal remains believed that "we have the most posi-
tive evidence that these bones are the remains of Khouniatonou
[Ikhnaton]." Other scholars, however, have, on the basis of re-
that the body cannot in any case be that of the king in whose
coffin it found a resting place." A decade later, R. Engelbach
expressed his conviction that the mummy was not that of Ikh-
naton; he thinks it is the remains of Smenkhkara. Derry shares
Engelbach's view in this matter. Peet has expressed his doubt.
And Pendlebury says that "there is every reason to suppose that
it is his [i.e., Smenkhkara's] skeleton, found in the cache of Queen
Ty at Thebes, which has so long passed for that of Akhenaten." ^^
naton but a boy when he became king and hence would have
been too young to do all that he was supposed to have done.
Under considerable pressure from the archeologists, Elliot Smith
reconsidered. He came to the conclusion that the bones showed
signs of "a. rare disorder, only recently recognized by physicians,"
known as Dystocia adiposo-genitalis. "One of the effects of this
condition/' he says, "is to delay the process of the consolidation
of the bones." Therefore, he concludes, the person in question
may have been as old as thirty or even thirty-six at the time of
his death. But, he cannot resist adding, the bones still appear to
him to be those of a man who died in his early twenties! Professor
Derry believes that the bones indicate an age of not more than
twenty-three years. Regarding the pathology of the individual,
there is flat contradiction as well as confusion. Elliot Smith, who
was the first to examine the skeleton, was convinced that he had
had hydrocephalus. A. R. Ferguson, Professor of Pathology in
the Cairo School of Medicine, who also examined the cranium,
declared, according to Elliot Smith, that "the signs of hydro-
cephalus were unquestionable." Derry, who examined the cranium
after further restoration of it, declared that "the conformation of
the skull does not support the statement that the person to whom
it belonged suffered from hydrocephalus ... It is indeed the very
reverse of the shape produced by hydrocephalus," ^® (emphasis
ours).
In view of the evidence and conflicting testimony, we believe
we would be justified in drawing the following conclusions: i.
XI
Attempt has also been made to account for Ikhnaton's great-
Egyptian kings before Ikhnaton had wives from Asia. But what
is the significance of this foreign blood or the Armenoid jaw so
XII
How then are the striking events which took place in Egypt
between 1375 and 1358 b.c. to be explained? can choose be- We
tween two types of interpretation: the one is psychological and
anthropomorphic; the other is culturological. What are their
relative merits?
that had been going on for centuries before the "Heretic King"
was born. Philosophic development toward monotheism was al-
ready well advanced before Ikhnaton's birth. The rivalry between
the throne and the temple, the struggle between priest and king
for power, was already hoary with age in 1386 b.c. More than
that, this sort of competition is a characteristic of all nations
where the temporal and ecclesiastical aspects of the central in-
man?
The answer seems to be that, as we indicated at the outset, the
old, primitive, anthropomorphic type of thinking that has been
so popular for so many hundreds of thousands of years has not
IKHNATON
who made a study of
Ruffer, the paleopathology of ancient Egypt,
and who consequently was intimately acquainted with the evi-
dence indicating Ikhnaton's abnormality, nevertheless argues as
follows
"... monarch who founds a monotheistic religion in the
a
teeth of the opposition of a most powerful priesthood, who builds
a new town where he worships his god away from old associations
and among congenial surroundings, who endows that new town
with beautiful temples, who patronizes a new form of art, and
who perhaps composed the magnificent hymn to Aton, cannot
be considered as lacking in energy, or as a degenerate, or an
effeminate person." ^^ Thus, certain facts indicating pathology
are not permitted for a moment to interfere with a cherished illu-
sion of historical interpretation. Surely the mastery of myth over
realism could go no further.
Sometimes these psychological interpretations contradict each
other. Thus Sir Marc cites Ikhnaton's "pathological obesity" as a
possible reason for the loss of Egypt's Asiatic empire. "The ex-
treme corpulency of the king," he vvnrites, "may have been
responsible for his politics. On account of his obesity he probably
disliked physical exertion, and may have been the reason why
this
(Newberry). His age at the time of his accession has been much
debated and is still uncertain. Evidence concerning his health
and physical condition is so varied as to be virtually worthless.
Only where one knows so little can one write so much; the
absence of facts gives the imagination free rein.
Thus in the Great Man interpretation of history the known
facts of the culture process are explained by the pseudo-facts of
psychology, the known by the unknown. A worse error of reason-
ing would be hard to find— within or outside the field of scholar-
ship.
XIII
XIV
What we have said about Ikhnaton so far would apply to any
great man who has been invoked to explain historical events. We
now wish to turn to aspects of the scholars' image of the Heretic
King that are peculiar to him.
When Breasted, Weigall and others create a phenomenal person
to explain remarkable historical events they are, as we have seen,
following a tradition that has flourished since the Old Stone Age.
But they had an added reason for their exaltation of Ikhnaton.
This is to be found in the religious outlook of these authors.
God— the one and only God, our God, the English-speaking,
Protestant God— decided to reveal himself to this Egyptian king
about 1400 B.C. Ikhnaton caught the vision, was fired by it,
saw in him the beneficent father of all men. It was the first time
in history that a discerning eye has caught this great universal
®^ (emphasis ours).
truth,"
Ikhnaton devoted himself with "feverish fanaricism" to spread-
ing the true faith, "fully convinced that he might enrirely recast
the world of religion."''^
After Ikhnaton had caught the vision of the true God he be-
came impatient with the paganism of his fellow countrymen:
Asia an army which would silence all insult but [he] did not find
such a step consistent with his principles . . . Akhnaton definitely
refused to do battle believing that a resort to arms was an offence
to God . . . like that greater Teacher 1300 years later . . . the
Pharaoh suffered a very Agony as he realized that his principles
were leading him to the loss of all his dearest possessions." ^^
isolated prototype. One might believe that Almighty God had for
* Breasted, The Dawn of Conscience, p. 22. Baikie admits that the re-
semblance between the Egj'ptian hymn and the Hebrew Psalter 104 is "indeed
sufficiently striking" but sees "no need to imagine that there was borrowing
on the part of the later author" {The Amarna Age, p. 321). W. O. E.
Oesterly, on the other hand, feels that the evidence of historical connection
is "convincing" ("Egypt and Israel," pp. 244-45, in The Legacy of Egypt,
S. R. K. Glanville, ed.).
276 THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE
Thus Ikhnaton is not merely the Great Man who moves and
shapes the culture history of Egypt; he becomes the instrument of
Divine Purpose. Through him did God first reveal himself to man.
But the time was not yet ripe; paganism and idolatry were still
XV
The drama of Ikhnaton and monotheism is excellent material
for the artist as well as for the historian and scientist. Thomas
Mann uses Joseph in Egypt as the vehicle for his message to a
world sick and in turmoil. Amenhotep III, the father of Ikhnaton,
was the pharaoh of Egypt during the earlier part of Joseph's life,
but does not concern us here. Ikhnaton may have been the phar-
aoh before \^•hom Joseph was brought after he had interpreted his
fellow-prisoners' dreams. Mann does not identify him by name,
but describes him as follows:
XVI
"Until Ikhnaton the history of the world had been but the
irresistible drift of tradition. All men had been but drops of water
in the great current" (Breasted). Now that our study is done we
must conclude that history is still the irresistible flow of the stream
of culture and that all men are but chips floating on that stream.
Our inquiry has shown conclusively that the events of Ikhnaton's
reign were but links in a chain that extended for centuries before
IKHNATON 279
and after his lifetime. The Hnks were more striking or emphatic
no doubt, but Hnks, nevertheless. We can come to no other
conclusion than that the general trend of events would have been
the same had Ikhnaton been but a sack of sawdust.
The Great Man theory of historical interpretation is, however,
one of compelling power and appeal:
A man Caesar is born, and for ages after we have a Roman Em-
pire, Christ is born, and millions of minds so grow and cleave
to his genius that he
confounded with virtue and the possible
is
tain and direct. And at every point where the Great Man theory
conflicts with evidence, it is the evidence that must give way. If
may have been superior organisms. But had they been reared as
in the driver's seat is immaterial; the great organism goes its own
way unalterably. The same observations may be made in the case
of Germany. Whether the Great Man be Wilhelm, Bismarck, or
Hitler, the organism that was Germany followed a constant and
uniform course: Drang nach Oesten, lebensraum, colonies, com-
mercial rivalry. The reasons for this uniformity of national be-
havior are of course plain: the land, the people who grow upon it,
the resources of the land or its lack of them, its position with
reference to other nations, the trade routes of the world, etc.
These remain relatively constant and consequently the behavior
of the social organism remains constant. Great Men and Ideol-
ogies do more to obscure these fundamental facts than to explain
them. The Great Man is the instrument, the Ideology, the ration-
alization, of the social organism as it struggles for survival in the
"He's [the Red King's] dreaming now," said Tweedledee: "and what
do vou think he's dreaming about?"
Alice said, "Nobody can guess that."
"Why, about you.'" Tweedledee exclaimed, clapping his hands trium-
phantly. "And if he left off dreaming about you, where do you suppose
you'd be?"
"Where I am now, of course," said Alice.
"Not you!" Tweedledee retorted contemptuously. "You'd be no-
where. Why, you're only a sort of thing in his dream!"
"If that there King was to wake," added Tweedledum, "you'd go
out —bang! — just like a candle."
"I shouldn't!" Alice exclaimed indignantly. "Besides, if I'm only a
sort of thing in his dream, what are you, I should like to know?"
"Ditto," said Tweedledum.
"Ditto, ditto!" cried Tweedledee.
He shouted this so loud that Alice couldn't help saying "HushI
if you make so much noise."
You'll be waking him, I'm afraid,
"Well, no use your talking about waking him," said Tweedle-
it's
dum, "when you're only one of the things in his dream. You know
very well you're not real."
"I am real!" said Alice, and began to cry.
"You won't make yourself a bit realler by crying," Tweedledee re-
marked: "there's nothing to cry about."
—
"If I wasn't real," Alice said —
half laughing through her tears, it all
seemed so ridiculous "I shouldn't be able to cry."
"I hope you don't suppose those are real tears?" Tweedledum inter-
rupted in a tone of great contempt.
—
Lewis Carroll Through the Looking Glass
* She wrote the following works, some of which went into several editions:
The Mechanism oi the Heavens, 1831 (which was, it seems, a popularization
of the Mecanique Celeste of Laplace); The Connection of the Physical Sci-
ences, 1858; Molecular and Microscopic Science, 1869; Physical Geography,
1870.
284 THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE
"I believe that mathematical reality lies outside us, and that
our function is to discover or observe it, and that the theorems
which we prove, and which we describe grandiloquently as our
* *
'creations' are simply our notes of our observations."
which the individual is born, and so enter his mind from the
outside. But apart from cultural tradition, mathematical concepts
have neither existence nor meaning, and of course, cultural tradi-
cussion and we shall call upon him to speak for us from time to
time.^
Mathematics is, of course, a part of culture. Every people in-
herits from its predecessors, or contemporary neighbors, along with
ways of cooking, marrying, worshipping, etc., ways of counting,
calculating, and whatever else mathematics does. Mathematics is,
that can be said to express "human" nature more than any other.
Similarly it has been thought that certain conceptions of the
^
for granted that the concept of absolute space directly and imme-
diately corresponded to something in the external world; space,
he thought, is something that has an existence independent of
the human mind, "I do not frame hypotheses," he said. But the
concept space is a creation of the intellect, as are other concepts.
To be sure, Newton himself did not create the hypothesis of
absolute space. It came to him from the outside, as Durkheim
properly puts it. But although it impinges upon the organism
comme Jes ioTces cosmiques, it has a different source: it is not
the cosmos but man's culture.
For centuries it was thought that the theorems of Euclid were
merely conceptual photographs, so to speak, of the external world;
that they had a validity quite independent of the human mind;
that there was something necessary and inevitable about them.
The invention of non-Euclidean geometries by Lobatchewsky,
Riemann and others has dispelled this view entirely. It is now
clear that concepts such as space, straight line, plane, etc., are
no more necessary and inevitable as a consequence of the struc-
ture of the external world than are the concepts green and yellow
—or the relationship term with which you designate your mother's
brother, for that matter.
To quote Einstein again:
"We come now to the question: what is a priori certain or
necessary, respectively in geometry (doctrine of space) or its
THE LOCUS OF MATHEMATICAL REALITY 289
culture traits new syntheses are formed which were not antici-
pated by "their discoverers," or which contained impHcations
that were not seen or appreciated until further growth made them
more explicit. Sometimes novel features of a newly formed
synthesis are not seen even by the personin whose nervous sys-
* The
following data are taken from a long and varied list published in
Social Change, by Wm.
F. Ogburn (New York, 1923), pp. 90-102, in which
simultaneous inventions and discoveries in the fields of chemistry, physics,
biology, mechanical invention, etc., as well as in mathematics, are listed.
Law of inverse squares: Newton, 1666; Halley, 1684.
Introduction of decimal point: Pitiscus, 1608-12; Kepler, 1616; Napier,
1616-17.
THE LOCUS OF MATHEMATICAL REALITY 293
process has been going on rather uniformly over a wide area and
not sleep. Ideas rose in crowds; I felt them collide until pairs
interlocked, so to speak, making a stable combination. By the
next morning had established the existence of a class of
I
her writings which she considered her best, there was a 'not
herself which took possession of her and made her feel 'her own
personality to be merely the instrument through which the
spirit acted/ " ^^
we know full well is not our own. But we know whence it comes
and what its nature is. It is the great and cumulative stream of
human culture, flowing down to us from its sources in antiquity,
carrying us upon its bosom, nourishing and sustaining us, using,
but yet preserving rather than consuming, us for the culture and
the generations yet to come.
not been for the human ability to give these ideas overt expression
* The question of the extent to which the form and content of mathe-
matical thought are determined by the structure of the human mind, i.e., by
the neuro-sensory-muscular-etcetera system of man, is interesting and relevant
but one into which we shall not go at length here. Obviously the structure of
the human organism conditions all of man's experience, mathematical and
otherwise. With regard to such things as "inherent and necessary laws of
thought," however, it may be remarked that normal children and many primi-
tive peoples find nothing wrong with the notion that a body can be in two
different places at the —
same time not to mention the objection that is raised
to the phrase "at the same time" by the theory of relativity; 3=1 in some
philosophies; an animal need not be either a mammal, A, or a non-mammal,
not-A; it may be a monotreme, like the duckbill who lays eggs reptilian
fashion but who suckles its young; etc. Whatever the influence of the struc-
ture and processes of the human organism upon the "laws of thought or
logic" may be, it must, of course, find expression in one cultural form or an-
other; any neurological imperative will therefore always be conditioned by
convention.
300 THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE
Ideas are cast into symbolic form and given overt expression.
Communication is thus made easy and versatile. Ideas now im-
pinge upon nervous systems from the outside. These ideas react
upon one another within these nervous systems. Some are
eliminated; others strengthened. New combinations are formed,
new syntheses achieved. These advances are in turn communicated
to someone else, transmitted to the next generation. In a relatively
short time, the accumulation of mathematical ideas has gone
beyond the creative range of the individual human nervous sys-
world. But there is no mystery about it. Its reality is cultural: the
sort of reality possessed by a code of etiquette, traffic regulations,
the rules of baseball, the English language or rules of grammar.
Thus we see that there is no mystery about mathematical
reality. We need not search for mathematical "truths" in the
302 THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE
"Again and again in the world's history, savage tribes must have had
plainly before their minds the simple practical alternative between
marrying-out and being killed out . .
." —E. B. Tylor i
303
304 THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE
close relatives. But if this were the case, why should societies
* In
1932, Professor Lowie abandoned the instinct theory of incest pro-
hibitions. But he comes no closer to an explanation than to observe that "the
aversion to incest is, therefore, best regarded as a primeval cultural adaptation"
(Lowic, 1933) p. 67. In one of his most recent works. An Introduction to
Cultural Anthiopohg}' (2nd ed., New York, 1940) he again discusses incest
but goes no further than to suggest that "the horror of incest is not inborn,
<hough it is doubtless a very ancient cultural feature" (p. 232).
THE DEFINITION AND PROHIBITION OF INCEST 305
evident, but it is wrong for all that. In the first place, inbreeding
viduals are more likely to break the powerful incest taboo than
are normal men and women and hence more likely to beget
degenerate offspring. But in societies where brother-sister mar-
riages are permitted or required, at least within the ruling family,
not only among human beings but among the lower animals as
well." This thesis of ignorance of the facts of life among primitive
namely, his parallel cousins of several degrees for example, and the
children of his mother's and father's parallel cousins, also of
several degrees. Marriage between individuals who call each other
"brother" and "sister" is strictly prohibited by the incest taboo,
even though they be cousins of the third or fourth degree. But
marriage with a first cross-cousin may be permitted and often
THE DEFINITION AND PROHIBITION OF INCEST 307
is required. Now these people may not understand the biology
of conception and pregnancy, but they know which woman bore
each child. Thus we see that the marriage rules disregard the
degree of biological relationship so far as preventing inbreeding is
concerned; they may prohibit marriage with a fourth parallel
cousin who is called "brother" or "sister," but permit or require
marriage with a first cross-cousin who is called "cousin." Obviously,
the kinship terms express sociological rather than biological re-
lationships. Obvious also is the fact that the incest taboos follow
the pattern of social ties rather than those of blood.
But suppose that inbreeding did produce inferior offspring, are
brothers joined forces, slew and ate the father, and thus put an
end to the father horde. Together they dared and accomplished
what would have remained impossible for them singly." ^ But
they did not divide their father's women among themselves as
they had planned. Now that he was dead their hatred and ag-
gressiveness disappeared, and their love and respect for him came
to the fore. As a consequence, they determined to give him in
group, but must seek other mates. In this way the incest taboo
he does not say so outright, that the incest taboo became incorporated into
the germ plasm and was consequently transmitted by means of biological
heredity: "The incest barrier probably belongs to the historical acquisitions of
humanity and, moral taboos, it must be fixed in
like other many individuals
through organic heredity," (Freud, 1938) p. 617.
THE DEFINITION AND PROHIBITION OF INCEST 309
definition and prohibition of incest. We may, however, briefly
notice two others before we leave the subject, namely, those of
E. Westermarck and Emile Durkheim.
Westermarck's thesis that "the fundamental cause of the exoga-
mous prohibitions seems to be the remarkable absence of erotic
feelings between persons living very closely together from child-
hood, leading to a positive feeling of aversion when the act is
thought of," ^ is not in accord with the facts in the first place
and would still be inadequate if it were. Propinquity does not
annihilate sexual desire, and if it did there would be no need
for stringent prohibitions. Secondly, incest taboos are frequently
know the origin of incest dread and do not even know how to
" «
guess at it.
the causes of incest regulations, but where they are and why and
how they are exercised are matters too obscure for description or
explanation.
The late Alexander Goldenweiser, a prominent disciple of Franz
Boas, never discovered the secret of the prohibition of incest. In
Early Civih'zation he spoke of certain taboos that "are everywhere
reinforced by the so-called 'horror of incest,' an emotional reaction
of somewhat mysterious origin." Fifteen years later in Anthro-
pology, his last major work, he could go no farther than to repeat
these identical words.^^
The sociologists have little to offer. Kimball Young, for example,
disavows instinct as the source of incest prohibitions, but he
* Totem and Taboo, 217. Frazer's statement was: "Thus the ultimate
p.
origin of exogamy and with it the law of incest —
since exogamy was devised
to prevent incest — remains a problem nearly as dark as ever," {Totemism
and Exogamy, Vol. I, p. 165).
THE DEFINITION AND PROHIBITION OF INCEST 311
advances no further explanation than to assert that "the taboo is
a rather constantand expected result arising from the very nature
of the social interaction between parents and children and among
the children themselves" i^— which is virtually equivalent to no
explanation at all.
lost his bearings and who must try to recover his true course.
.
already been found, and that long ago.
Confusion in this field of ethnological theory has been due to
circumstances such as we have just described. Theorists who have
sought biological or psychological explanations of incest taboos
have been on the wrong track; they have only led us into blind
Those who have sought a culturological explanation have
alleys.
And even men like Lowie and Wissler, who have done excellent
•work along culturological lines in other areas, have relapsed to
the psychological level when confronted with the problem of
incest. Thus Lowie once declared that "it is not the function of
the ethnologist but of the biologist and psychologist to explain
I
why man has so deep-rooted a horror of incest." ^'^
And Wissler
is inclined to turn over all problems of cultural origins to the
psychologist, leaving to the anthropologist the study of traits
associates, his parents and his sibhngs, just as he fixates his food
hungers upon familiar foods that have given satisfaction. He thus
comes to have definite orientations and firm attachments in the
realm of sex as in the field of nutrition. There is thus no mystery
about incestuous desire; it is merely the formation and fixation,
Other factors being constant, the tribe that exploits most fully the
possibilities of mutual aid will have the best chance to survive.
In times of crisis, co-operation may become a matter of life or
death. In providing food and maintaining an effective defense
against foreign foes, co-operation becomes all-important.
But would primordial man be obliged to construct a co-opera-
tive organization for subsistence and defense from the very begin-
almost always find the new growing out of, or based upon, the
old. And such was the case here; the new co-operative organization
for food and defense was built upon a structure already present:
the family. After all, virtually everyone belonged to one family
or another, and the identification of the co-operative group with
the sex-based family would mean that the benefits of mutual aid
would be shared by all. When, therefore, certain species of an-
mutual aid.
devices for making permanent the marriage tie that the prohi-
bition of incest has established. When a family or a group of
relatives has received articles of value as bride-price or dowry, they
distribute them as a rule among their various members. Should
the marriage tie be broken or dissolved, they may have to return
the wealth received at the time of the marriage. This is almost
certain to be the case if it can be shown that the spouse whose
relatives were the recipients of the bride-price or dowry was at
318 THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE
j
ing a definite economic aspect. This is, in fact, precisely what we
do find. Let us turn for summary statements to two leading au-
thorities in social anthropology. Professor Robert H. Lowie writes
as follows:
operation of man and wife, the former providing the flesh food
and the latter the vegetable food, so that quite apart from the
question of children a man without a wife is in an unsatis-
factory position since he has no one to supply him regularly
with vegetable food, to provide his firewood, and so on. This
economic aspect of the family is a most important one ... I
believe that in the minds of the natives themselves this aspect
of marriage, i.e., its relation to subsistence, is of greatly more
importance than the fact that man and wife are sexual
partners .^^
* Onecourt ruling observes that "the gist of the action for ahenation of
affections is the loss of consortium. 'This is a property right growing out of
a social system that was striving to make full use of its resources
for co-operative endeavor. Marriage, as an institution, finds its
He comments upon the fact that Adam was both father and
father-in-law to his sons and daughters:
"So too Eve his wife was both mother and mother-in-law to
her children . . . while had there been two women, one the
mother, the other the mother-in-law, the family affection would
have had a wider field. Then the sister herself by becoming a wife
sustained in her single person two relationships which, had they
been distributed among individuals, one being sister, and an-
other being wife, the family tie would have embraced a greater
number of persons."
Saint Augustine does not, in these passages at least, make
explicit the advantages in security of life which would accrue to
the group as a consequence of exogamy. But he makes it quite
clear that community of social interest and "greater numbers of
persons" in the group are the reasons for the prohibition of incest.
If an understanding of incest and exogamy is as old in social
this essay. One of the principal themes of Civilization and Its Dis-
state has replaced the tribe and clan. Occupational groups and
economic organization become important bases of social life.
also
to the will of
2
man the course of social evolution . .
." —Wm. F. Og-
burn
on the rocks.
The mind that can weigh the infinitely distant stars track . . .
so.=
It would thus seem that the salvation of an earlier era has be-
come the social reconstruction of today: we can achieve it if we
will; if we fail it is because of our "perversity."
Father Wilhelm Schmidt, the leader of the Kulturkreis school
of ethnology, and his disciples in America believe firmly in free
332 THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE
or ugly. To be sure, she may not realize that the new designs are
fantastic and ugly at the time; "the latest style" can becloud a
woman's judgment. But one has only to browse through an album
of old snapshots to realize that beauty, grace, and charm do not
dominate the course of fashion.
And as for women's skirts! First they are short; then they are
long. A distinguished anthropologist. Professor A. L. Kroeber of
the University of California, has made a very interesting and
revealing study of the dimensions of women's dresses over a con-
siderable period of time. He found that "the basic dimensions of
modern European feminine dress alternate with fair regularity
between maxima and minima which in most cases average about
fifty years apart so that the full-wave length of their periodicity
is around a century." ^ The rhythms are regular and uniform.
Women have nothing to say about it. Even the designers and
creators must conform to the curve of change. We find no control
by man— or woman— here, only an inexorable and impersonal
trend. When a maximum point on the curve is reached, the trend
is reversed and skirts lengthen or shorten as the case may be,
334 THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE
Women are helpless; they can do nothing but follow the trend.
When the curve ascends they must shorten their dresses; when it
descends, they must lengthen them. It may seem remarkable that
point later.
another's.
When, however, we examine the knowledge and understand^
ing with which the affairs of the nation are administered we begin
again to wonder. Wc find the most august authorities espousing
The fact is, we don't really know very much about the civiliza-
tion we live in. Let us take one of the simplest and most ele-
mentary questions imaginable: Why does our society prohibit
polygamy? Other societies permit plural mates, and Western
Europe once did, also. But now we feel very strongly about it.
more than one wife at one time. His wives may be perfectly satis-
fied with the arrangement and he may have injured no one. Yet
we put him in gaol.* Why? Why not have one more wife and
one less schoolmarm?
There are, to be sure, ready answers to these questions:
polygamy is "wrong," "immoral," "undemocratic," etc. But
practices are not prohibited because they are "wrong"; they are
wrong because they have been prohibited. It is not wrong to buy
and sell whiskey now; it was while the Eighteenth Amendment
our day,we have not reached the point of asking such questions,
to say nothing of answering them. As Archibald McLeish has
said, "We know all the answers, but we have not yet asked the
follows:
Despite the progress that has been made since The Rules was
written, this statement has a certain relevance today. If the
science of society and civilization is still so immature as to be
unable to solve such tiny and elementary problems as the pro-
hibition of polygamy, where are the knowledge and understand-
ing requisite to planning a new social system, to constructing a
new world order? One would not expect a savage craftsman, whose
best tools are made of chipped flint, to design and build a loco-
motive.
does not have its roots in the remote past. The lens of the new
200-inch telescope, for example, is made of glass. Glass emerged
from the manufacture of faience in ancient Egypt, which in turn
originated apparently as a by-product of burning bricks and
pottery, which followed the use of sun-dried brick, and, earlier.
MAN'S CONTROL OVER CIVILIZATION 337
culture.
Although it is man who chips arrowheads, composes sym-
phonies,etc., we cannot explain culture merely by saying that
or presidents; why some use milk, others loathe it; why some
pcnnit, others prohibit, polygamy. To explain all these things by
saying, "Man wanted them that way" is of course absurd. A device
that explains everything explains nothing.
Before we go very far we discover that we must disregard man
entirely in our efforts to explain cultural growth and cultural
differences— in short, culture or civilization as a whole. Man may
be regarded as a constant so far as cultural change is concerned.
Man is one species and, despite differences of skin, eye, and hair
color, shape of head, lips, and nose, stature, etc., which after all
are superficial, he is highly uniform in such fundamental features
as brain, bone, muscle, glands, and sense organs. And he has
undergone no appreciable evolutionary change during the last
There seems to be only one answer left and that is fairly plain
that are constantly interacting with each other, creating new com-
binations and syntheses. New elements are added constantly to the
stream; obsolete traits drop out. The culture of today is but
the cross-section of this stream at the present moment, the
resultant of the age-old process of interaction, selection, rejection,
and accumulation that has preceded us. And the culture of to-
morrow will be but the culture of today plus one more day's
growth. The numerical coefficient of today's culture may be said
to be 365,000,000 (i.e., a million years of days); that of tomorrow:
365,000,000 + 1. The culture of the present was determined by
the past and the culture of the future will be but a continuation
of the trend of the present. Thus, in a very real sense culture makes
itseU. At least, if one wishes to explain culture scientifically, he
must proceed as if culture made itself, as ii man had nothing to do
with the determination of its course or content. Man must be
there, of course, to make the existence of the culture process pos-
sible. But the nature and behavior of the process itself is self-
own laws.
Thus, culture makes man what he same time is and at the
makes itself. An Eskimo, Bantu, Tibetan, Swede, or American is
what he is, thinks, feels, and acts as he does, because his culture
ready there; he could not escape it; he could do nothing but react
to it, and that on its own terms. The English language, the
Christian religion, our political institutions, our mills, mines,
factories, railroads, telephones, armies, navies, race tracks, dance
halls, and all the other thousands of things that comprise our
They have weight, mass,
civilization are here in existence today.
flattering and comforting to his ego. In days gone by, man has
believed that he could control the weather; countless primitive
peoples have had rituals for making rain, stilling high winds, or
averting storms. Many have had ceremonies by means of which
the course of the sun in the heavens could be "controlled."
With the advance of science, however, man's faith in his omnipo-
tence has diminished. But he still believes that he can control
his civilization.
The philosophy of science— of cause and effect relationships,
of determinism— has been firmly established in the study of physi-
cal phenomena. It is well entrenched in the biological field, also.
Psychology may have demonstrated the operation of the principle
of cause and effect, of determinism, in mental processes, and may
have dispelled the notion of free will for the individual. But social
science is still so immature as to permit one to find refuge in a
vival, struggles for the possession and use of the resources of the
earth, for fe'rtile fields; coal, oil, and iron deposits; for uranium
mines; for seaports and waterways; for markets and trade routes;
for military bases. No amount of understanding will alter or
remove the basis of this stmggle, any more than an understanding
of the ocean's tides will diminish or terminate their flow.
But the fallacy of assuming that we can increase and perfect
our control over civilization through social science is even more
egregious than we have indicated. To call upon science, the
essence of which is" acceptance of the principles of cause and effect
and determinism, to support a philosophy of Free Will, is fairly
—finds that a faith in education and its efficacy to cure all ills is
for so far they are all alike, but as to the kinds of formulae into
which they put their faith. Our great formula for bringing
about the realization of our leading ideals is education. . . .
upon those whom they train an outlook that differs from the
one that they have received? Each generation is brought up by
the previous generation and it is necessary therefore to reform
the latter if it is to improve the one which follows it. We go
around in circles. At long intervals it may well happen that
someone may come along whose ideas and aspirations are in
advance of those of his contemporaries, but the moral con-
stitution of a people is not made over by these isolated indi-
\ viduals. No doubt it pleases us to believe that one eloquent
voice is sufficient to transform the social fabric as if by magic,
and actions accord with laws as definite as those which govern the
motion of the waves, the combination of acids and bases, and
the growth of plants ... If law is anywhere it is everywhere." "
We have combined "a scientific realism, based on mechanism,"
says Alfred North Whitehead, with "an unwavering belief in the
Social Order?"
* Note that we have said possessed by, rather than "believes in." Philoso-
phies possess, hold, animate, guide and direct the articulate, protoplasmic
—
mechanisms that are men. Whether a man an average man, typical of his
—
group "believes in" Christ or Buddha, Genesis or Geology, Determinism or
Free Will, is not a matter of his own choosing. His philosophy is merely the
response of his neuro-sensory-muscular-glandular system to the streams of
cultural stimuli impingingupon him from the outside. What is called "phi-
losophizing" merely the interaction of these cultural elements within his
is
exert more control over the weather than over culture, for he
can exert some control over the former even now and he may in-
crease this control in the future. But he exerts no control what-
ever over his culture and theoretically there is no possibility of
his ever doing so.
and so on. Group B mines coal and iron, talks Welsh, imports
its food from the outside, uses money, is literate, drinks ale, etc.
Now the question is. Why does each group behave as it does?
But what one strives for and how his effort is expressed is de-
termined by his culture. For example, the goal of one people
may be eternal life in heaven for which their terrestrial existence
MAN'S CONTROL OVER CIVILIZATION 353
Living human beings cannot help but exert themselves, and every-
thing they do counts for something in one way or another. Far
from wishing to deny or ignore this, we wish to emphasize it.
But this is not the question raised by the culturologist, the cul-
because what one does counts for nought, but that what one
does, how he does it, and the end and purpose for which it is
the time and many of them are quite accurate: wheat production,
traffic fatalities, freight car loadings, births, exhaustion of oil
reserves, and many other matters are already within the reach
of limited but nevertheless valuable prediction. If our ability to
predict were greatly increased by the development and matura-
tion of a science of culture the possibilities of a rational, effective,
and humane adjustment between man and culture and between
one cultural segment and another would be increased accordingly.
If, for example, a science of culture could demonstrate that the
trend of social evolution is toward larger political groupings, then
the chances of making the futile attempt to restore or maintain
the independence of small nations would be lessened. If the
trend of cultural evolution is away from private property and free
matic process so far. It has not yet reached the point where
intelligence, self-consciousness, and understanding are very con-
356 THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE
would not have been "us" who achieved it but our culture. In
the interaction of elements in the culture process, those traits less
that play upon him. Thus he may have the belief that typhoid
exists only in the mind, or is caused by witches or bacilli, thrust
planted in the center, the sun and stars spread upon the vault of
heaven, and men and gods together acted out the drama of life
358 THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE
charms, and rituals, mighty man could control the weather, the
seasons, and even enlist the gods in the service of man. Now it
and philosophies, has a life and laws of its own. Man is just
cumstances that has made life possible. Man did long rebel against
his dependence upon these outside forces; to be wholly at their
mercy was unendurable. As a matter of fact, man has employed
his precious and unique gift of speech more to deny the facts of
his existence than to improve upon them. But a certain portion
of the human race has come at last to accept our dependence
upon nature and to try to make the most of it.
Introduction
1n the preceding chapters we have dealt with various aspects
of the culture process. We now encompass it in its entirety.
The development of human culture as a whole is here in-
terpreted upon the culturological level. And, in addition to further
eat of the fruit of every tree in the garden. The mastery of ter-
restrial fire was tolerable, but to create energy by the transforma-
tion of matter is to play with celestial fire. Whether it can be
|i
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ENERGY AND THE EVOLUTION OF
CULTURE
and survival.
through the prism of social systems also. The qualities and features
* The
functioning of any particular culture will of course be conditioned
by environmental conditions. But in a consideration of culture as a
local
whole, we may average all environments together to form a constant factor
which may be excluded from our formula of cultural development.
\
ENERGY AND THE EVOLUTION OF CULTURE 369
in the last analysis, upon this solar energy stored up in plants. All
life, therefore, is dependent upon photosynthesis.
The first men subsisted upon plants and animals as, of course,
the forces of nature. The yield of plant food and other useful
plant materials per unit of human labor was greatly increased by
the substitution of plant cultivation for wild plant gathering.
Improved strains were developed through selective breeding. Cul-
tivation, fertilization and irrigation served to increase the yield
tamia, India, and China were reached prior to looo b.c, in some
cases considerably earher, and from that time until the beginning
of the Fuel Age, about a.d. 1800, no culture of the Old World
surpassed, in any profound and comprehensive way, the highest
levels achieved in the Bronze Age. This is not to say, of course,
that there was no progress at all from 1,000 b.c. to a.d. 1789.
There were innovations here and there and many refinements of
already existing traits. But, taking cultures as wholes, and measur-
ing them by such yardsticks as size of political unit, size of city,
magnitude of architectural edifices and engineering works, density
of population, production and accumulation of wealth, etc., the
cultures of Europe between the disintegration of the Roman
Empire and the rise of the Power Age were in general inferior
ready achieved by this time had not some way been devised to
harness additional amounts of energy per capita per year by tapping
the forces of nature in a new form. A way was found, however,
to do this: energy in the form of coal, and, later, oil and gas,
a whole.
But, again, after a very rapid rise, the curve of cultural develop-
ment began to show some signs of levelling off. We do not wish
to intimate that culture had already gone as far as it could on a
is the prime mover, the active agent. Tools are merely the means
that serve this power. The energy factor may be increased indefi-
nitely; the efficiency of the tool only within limits. With a given
and other need-serving materials— they will have one type of social
system. If they lead a sedentary life, feeding upon rich beds of
shellfish, or if they are pastoralists or intensive agriculturalists, or
maritime traders, or industrialists, etc., they will have other types
of social systems. The process of military offense and defense and
the technological means with which it is exercised also acts as a
determinant of social organization, sometimes a very powerful
one. Thus we see that the social system of a people is at bottom
determined by the use of the technological means of subsistence
and of oflfense and defense. Those social institutions not directly
ENERGY AND THE EVOLUTION OF CULTURE 377
related to the technology are related indirectly; they serve to co-
ordinate the various sectors of society with one another and to
integrate them into a coherent whole.
The social systems of primitive peoples vary tremendously in
detail because the specific circumstances of natural habitat and
technology vary. But all social systems resting upon a human
energy (i.e., pre-pastoral, pre-agricultural ) basis belong to a com-
mon type. They are all relatively small and manifest a minimum
of structural differentiation and specialization of function. We
find no highly developed societies upon the primitive foundation
of a technology powered by human energy alone.
The societies of pastoralists and agriculturalists in the early
stages of these technological developments are likewise relatively
free access to the resources of nature for all, relatively little social
than by hunting, fishing, and gathering, but more food per capita,
more per unit of human labor expended. And, as the agricultural
arts developed, the productivity of human labor in this field in-
creased. It gradually became possible for a portion of the popula-
tion to produce food for all. This meant that a portion of the
population could be diverted from agriculture and turned into
other channels, such as the industrial and esthetic arts. As the agri-
tending with one another for. rich, fertile river valleys, the treasures
loan, let alone the principal. Taxes levied by the ruling class
through the mechanism of the state and exorbitant rents levied
upon small tenants by large landlords also tended to reduce the
masses to a condition of economic bondage and impotence.
Thus we see that the social, political and economic effects of
enabled them to solve both these problems with one stroke. Thus
the social system tended to act as a damper on further increase in /
this advance a social system was created that eventually curbed and
contained the technological system in such a way as to bring
progress virtually to a stop, despite the fact that the technological
limits of agricultural development had not been even closely ap-
stores would be
the buildings and especially the big department
things in his day unknown. The smooth-paved streets and
cement sidewalks would be new to him. The fast-moving elec-
tric street-cars and motor vehicles would
fill him with wonder.
Even a boy on a bicycle would be a curiosity. Entering the
White House, someone would have to explain to him such
commonplaces of modern life as sanitary plumbing, steam heat-
ing, friction matches, telephones, electric lights, the Victrola,
and even the fountain pen. In Lincoln's day, plumbing was in
its beginnings, coal-oil lamps and gas-jets were coming into
use, and the steel pen had only recently superseded the quill
pen. The steel rail, the steel bridge, high-powered locomotives,
refrigerator cars, artificial ice, the cream separator, the tv^dne
rural free delivery, the cable, the wireless, gasoline engines, re-
peating rifles, dynamite, submarines, airplanes— these and
hundreds of other inventions now in common use were all alike
unknown.^
World War looks quaint today, and some of the weapons and
techniques introduced for the first time in World War II are
already obsolete. One hardly dares to picture the next great mili-
tary conflict; novelties already unveiled and others only intimated
suggest all too vividly the distance that technological progress has
gone since the days of Pearl Harbor. And behind the scenes in
the theater of Mars are the great research laboratories and prov-
ing grounds, working under forced draft to develop and perfect
new tools and techniques in all phases of our technology. The
rate of cultural advance is now greater than ever before. "Our
life," wrotQ the distinguished physicist, Arthur Holly Compton in
ENERGY AND THE EVOLUTION OF CULTURE 387
1940, "differs from that of two generations ago more than Ameri-
can life of that day differed from the civihzed hfe at the dawn of
written history." And, since Compton wrote these words, a
*
contain the Fuel technology and the commercial rivalries and class
conflicts engendered by it, society would become stabilized in a
\
ENERGY AND THE EVOLUTION OF CULTURE 389
larger political units. The Agricultural technology replaced villages
with cities, tribes with nations and empires. The modern Fuel
technology also is working toward larger political groupings, fewer
concentrations of political power. The relatively recent trend
toward amalgamation can be seen in the unification of Germany
and Italy in the nineteenth century. The Treaty of Versailles
attempted, with the "Balkanization of Europe," to oppose the
age-old trend of social evolution by breaking the continent up into
little pieces. One of the conspicuous and significant aspects of the
Second World War in its initial phase was a movement toward
the unification of Europe. A half-dozen or so World Powers
engaged in the First World War; only two great powers emerged
from the second. The competition for power narrows as con-
testants are eliminated. The logical conclusion is, however, not
simply the domination of the world by a single nation— this would
be but a transitional stage—but a single political organization that
will embrace the entire planet and the whole human race. Toward
such a denouement is our mighty Power technology rapidly
moving us.
But a new and ominous element has recently entered the pic-
ture: nuclear atomic energy for military purposes. Here again the
significance of this new factor derives from the fact that a new
source of energy has been harnessed and in awful form. Once
more we are upon the threshold of a technological revolution.
But the consequences of this new technological advance may
possibly differ radically from those of the Agricultural and the
Fuel Revolutions. New technologies in the past have rendered old
social systems obsolete but they have replaced them with new
systems. The new nuclear technology however threatens to destroy
civilization itself, or at least to cripple it to such an extent that it
logical level are capable of growth. That is, the power to capture
any energy is also the ability to harness more and still more of it.
Thus cultural systems, like biological organisms, develop, multiply,
that civilization, won at such great cost in pain and labor, simply
only to begin the long climb over again, this time perhaps by a
somewhat different route; culture too may be able to profit from
experience. But culture may not destroy or even critically wound
itself with its new powers. Destruction is no more inevitable than
embrace. Then and only then will the curse of war be lifted and
the way made free and open for a fuller and richer life.
they were final. And, worst of all, they shut the door to anything
better; what else could one ask or learn after being told that an
event was but an act of God? The metaphysical— to use Comte's
term— type of interpretation at least freed one from the bondage
400 THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE
giving way to a more virile flora; and odds and ends of meta-
physical reasoning here and there.
hving forms.
This is not to say, as v^^e have tried to make clear earlier, that
man is going to win control over the course of cultural develop-
ment through a scientific comprehension of its structure and
processes, any more than we have won control over the sun or
distant galaxies by coming to a considerable understanding of
them. Understanding, scientific understanding, is itsdi a cultural
process. The growth of science is a culture process just as the
development of a musical style, a type of architecture, or forms
istic conception of man and the cosmos: man was the chief work
406 THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE
and as such evokes the hostility of all who are activated or directed
culture, not man, that determines the form and content of hu-
man behavior. The philosophy of Free Will cannot accept a
theory of cultural determinism. To many sociologists and cul-
obvious, to them that culture could not exist without man, and
that it is people, real flesh and blood human beings —not a
reified entity called "culture"— who do things; anyone can see
this for himself.
would reject
The culturologist proceeds along the same lines, with the same
outlook and the same techniques of interpretation, as the physicist.
Cultures can no more exist without men than vehicles can move
without friction. But one may regard culture as if it were inde-
pendent of man just as the physicist may consider vehicles as if
"During the last hundred years," writes Lowie, "it has become
increasingly clear that culture . . . [is] a distinct domain . . , that
demands for its investigation a distinct science." ^ But what are
we to call our new science? We have taken much pains to demon-
strate the fundamental difference between a science of culture and
the objections that were raised to Spencer's use of the term "soci-
ology." As he tells us in the introduction to his Principles of
Sociology, his friends tried to dissuade him from using the word
on the ground that it was a "barbarism." Similarly today, some
scholars find that culturology grates harshly upon their ears. Thus,
V. Gordon Childe writes that "the prejudices engendered by
Literae Humanioies are too strong to allow [him] to adopt White's
term 'culturology'." * Similarly J.
L. Myres, in a review of "The
Expansion of the Scope of Science," calls "culturology" a "bar-
°
barous name."
It appears that those who condemned Spencer's use of "soci-
ology" as a "barbarism" did so on etymological grounds: it is
and processes of living languages have little regard for such sen-
sibilities. The Anglo-American language readily absorbs words
from foreign languages— taboo, shaman, coyote, tobacco— and
createsnew words ("kodak") or new forms ("trust-buster") rather
easily.Nor does it hesitate to resort to hybridizations and other
improvisations upon occasion, such as numerology, thermocouple,
thermopile, automobile, etc., as well as sociology. "Television" is
have made clear, an old one; it goes back at least to Tylor's first
philosophy that has been dear to the hearts of men for ages, and
still inspires and nourishes many a social scientist as well as lay-
man. This is the ancient and still respectable philosophy of
anthropocentrism and Free Will. "What nonsense to say that
culture does this or that! What is culture but an abstraction? It
is not culture that does things; it is people, real flesh and blood
human beings. It is always the individual who really thinks, and
feels, and acts. Anyone can see this for himself! How absurd then
to talk of a science of culture; what a distortion of reality!" As
the preceding pages have shown, this view is all too prevalent
and vigorous in American anthropology today,
Culturology means determinism, also. The principle of cause
and effect operates in the realm of cultural phenomena as it does
everywhere else in our experience of the cosmos. Any given cul-
tural situation has been determined by other cultural events. If
it is regarded as immoral-and-therefore-false.
The sweet soothing illusion of omnipotence still finds a ready
market and a great demand. We can lay hold of our own destiny
and shape it as we will. "Mankind under God controls his own
cultural destiny and is free to choose and realize the ends . .
/'
port given the makers of the atomic bomb, etc., etc. Science, it
appears, is to become the handmaiden of a species of modern
magic; the social scientist, to assume the role of a super-shaman.
It is against the weight and force of this passion of free will,
6. Kroeber, 1931.
7. J. Jeans et ah, 1931a; Russell, 1929.
1. Argyll, p. 147.
2. Clodd, p. 217.
3. Schmidt, 1934, p. 41.
4. Schnierla, 1948.
5. Hooton, 1931, pp. 138-39.
6. Lowie, 1929, p. 5.
7. Yerkes, p. 347.
8. Tylor, 1881, p. 51.
9. Hooton, 1931, pp. 139, 136.
10. Kohler, p. 295.
11. ibid., p. 277.
416
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