SUB-HUMAN CULTURE BEGINNINGS 



By A. L. KROEBER 



University of California 



jA S ONE of the social sciences, 

 /% Anthropology deals with that 

 / — % relatively closed system of 

 JL- A- phenomena called culture. 

 This system is closed in the sense that life 

 is a closed system. The biologist does 

 not repudiate the results of physics and 

 chemistry; but his task is with phenomena 

 and problems on the specific level of life. 

 He expects that his findings will ulti- 

 mately be convertible into findings in 

 terms of the inorganic sciences, yet he 

 realizes that his approach must be in 

 terms of his own. Just so the social 

 scientist does not assert that human social 

 activities are controlled by a metaphysical 

 something unrelated to organic forces. 

 But he does believe that the first explana- 

 tion of cultural phenomena must be in 

 cultural terms. He sees every cultural 

 phenomenon preceded by other phe- 

 nomena and related to them; and this 

 relation, on a cultural or social or supra- 

 organic level, he feels must first be clarified 

 and intellectually organized. Only then 

 can the approach from the organic or 

 physiologic level, and still later that from 

 the chemical one, lead to fruitful results. 

 Anything else leads to short-circuiting of 

 understanding. 



THE ORGANIC BASIS OF CULTURE 



Within the social sciences, history, 

 economics, politics deal with only part 

 of the totality of culture manifestations. 

 They are, therefore, essentially restricted 



to consideration of phenomena which lie 

 wholly within the system of culture. 

 These are purely social sciences. Anthro- 

 pology has a somewhat different outlook. 

 So far as it concerns itself with races, with 

 human beings respectively set apart and 

 united into groups by a common heredity, 

 Anthropology is organic or natural science. 

 So far as it examines institutions, customs, 

 folk-ways, inventions, and speech, it is 

 supra-organic or cultural. By common 

 consent the study of the earliest and most 

 backward peoples and cultures has been 

 left to Anthropology. The significance 

 of these incipient cultures is obviously not 

 so much intrinsic as in the light which 

 they may' shed by enabling a wider and 

 fuller range of comparisons on the nature 

 of culture as a whole. The relation of 

 the system of culture to the organic system 

 is thereby thrust into the foreground. I 

 have on another occasion defined the 

 special sphere of Anthropology as being 

 concerned with the interrelation of the 

 organic and the cultural. I have also 

 been criticised, perhaps justly, for aban- 

 doning the program after formulating it. 

 The reasons were the obvious one of diffi- 

 culty and the present slender promise of 

 productive results . It is however now and 

 then worthwhile to envisage the larger 

 problems which in candor we must admit 

 to be still largely insoluble, in order that 

 our daily work as scientists may remain as 

 much as possible in touch with the funda- 

 mentals of science, and not degenerate 



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