English

The Science of Culture

Of late, there has been a falling away from the culturo-logical point of view and objectives. Instead of interpretation of culture as such, many American anthropologists in recent years have turned to the overt reactions of human organisms and to the deep subconscious forces that underlie these reactions. Thus, many men and women anthropologists, who are by training and tradition best qualified to study culture, have abandoned it for adventures in psychology or psychiatry for which they have had little or no technical training and with but little equipment save a ready intuition. They have sold their culturological birthright for a mess of psychiatric pottage. And who is to study culture if not the anthropologists, particularly the culturologists? We have witnessed a definite regression in anthropology in America in recent years. But it will not last. In the chapters that follow we treat the Science of Culture in its several aspects: the origin and nature of culture, the emergence of the scientific interpretation of culture and an historical sketch of this new venture, the fundamental distinction between psychology and culturology, and, finally, a few demonstrations of the point of

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