Robert H. Lowie

Cultural Anthropology: A Science

The tendency to separate ethnology from the natural sciences is vicious. Ethnology is simply that branch of objective knowledge which defines the spatial, temporal, and functional relations of cultural phenomena. It uniformly applies those canons of scientific logic which are consistent with its varying problems. When these are chronological, ethnology inescapably applies the procedure of geology and political history, the techniques again varying with the case in question-from textual criticism to stratigraphic determination. The complexity of ethnological data may preclude Newtonian universals, but is not inconsistent with inductively established correlations, such as are in fact persistently proclaimed but practically never demonstrated.

Psychology and Sociology

What are the relations of psychology and sociology ? It is clear that the sociology of both primitive and higher civilizations yields new data for psychological interpretation. But can psychology as the older science, dealing with more fundamental phenomena, throw any light on the problems that confront the sociologist and ethnologist ? The question, even in this drastic form, is hardly absurd at the present stage of sociological and anthropological thinking. On the one hand, we find Graebner, the leader of the German historical school, resolutely turning his back on anything that savors of psychological interpretation. The sum and substance of ethnology, he tells us in his Methode der Etknologie, is to determine the actual development of cultures; and this he forthwith outlines as the result of contact between different peoples, leading to intermixture and superposition of cultural traits. From this point of view any similarities observed in different regions must be traced to a single point of origin, for there is no criterion, no certain proof, of independent development, while cultural borrowing is not only in some cases an established historical fact, but may be considered demonstrated when a resemblance of form between the particular features compared is accompanied by a corresponding similarity of associated traits. It matters not to Graebner whether a division of society into exogamous moieties may mean one thing in Australia and quite a different thing among the Iroquois or the Tlingit. He is interested in classifying cultural results, and one moiety appears no different from another. If a bungling schoolboy by a double blunder attained the same sum as a calculating-machine, Graebner would doubtless accuse either boy or machine of copying. Very different is the position assumed by such writers as LevyBruhl, Rivers, and Wissler. Each of them would insist that it is

A Note on Lapp Culture History

developments with the aid of written sources. They are, therefore, rarely able to do more than guess at the factors that have molded social arrangements. It is easier to indicate a significant nexus when demonstrable innovations were introduced at a definite period so that we can then follow the modifications in their wake. Thus, Dr Mandelbaum has shown that, and how, Cree culture was vitally affected at three distinct epochs by elements of white civilization, viz. guns and the fur trade, the horse, and transcontinental railways.1 Two Scandinavian publications little known in this country2 afford corresponding insight into the consequences of intensified reindeer-breeding among the Lapps and merit a wider audience. Though the authors may not synthesize their findings in so definite a manner as this article implies, I believe it does represent accurately the import of their findings. It is not my intention to enter into the problem of Lapp origins or the moot-question of how reindeer domestication evolved, but to adhere to facts either established by documentary evidence or by, sound linguistic and ethnographic inference. According to Wiklund the Lapps penetrated the Scandinavian peninsula from the north, moving mainly along the mountain ranges, and appeared in the in-