Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 22.djvu/57

 GOLDENWEISER] A NEW APPROACH TO HISTORY 45

The hypothesis required may now be stated in the form that human advancement follows upon the mental release, of the members of a group or of a single individual, from the authority of an established system of ideas. This release has, in the past, been occasioned through the breaking down of previous idea-systems by prolonged struggles between opposing groups which have been brought into con- flict as a result of the involuntary movements of peoples. What follows is the building up of a new idea-system, which is not a simple cumulation of the knowl- edge previously accepted, but the product of critical activity stirred by the per- ception of conflicting elements in the opposed idea-systems (pp. 151-2).

As one looks back, synthetically, at the author's effort, its timeliness and significance are strikingly revealed. The pressing into service of the different social sciences in the common enter- prise of making clear the history of man, is a task of which the execution has recently been advocated from quite different quarters ; x the theoretical importance, for certain purposes, of breaking through the accepted lines of demarcation between the conventionally recognized social sciences, has also been indicated. 2 The author is to be commended for his advocacy of more precise methodology in the solution of specific problems in historic research, to supple- ment, we hope, not to supplant, the less rigorous procedure of the more subjective type of interpretative historic narrative. In so far as the author's immediate endeavor will consist in the determi- nation of historic constants, he will certainly enjoy the support and keenest interest of all students of man and his history. It may be doubted, however, whether any constants thus revealed will prove as categorical as those of some natural sciences, not to speak of those of the exact sciences. To all appearance, the author is free from all racial bias and accepts man's culture the world over as furnish- ing strictly comparable material for historic study. Certain more extreme forms of environmental and economic interpretation are vigorously attacked and rejected. The scope and perspective of historic study is deliberately pushed beyond the boundaries of

1 Cf. Clark Wissler, "Historical and Psychological Interpretations in Culture," Science, vol. XLIII, 1916, and his "The American Indian", Introduction.

2 Cf. A. A. Goldenweiser, "History, Psychology and Culture," etc., Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, vol. xv (1918), Reprint, pp. 1-2. From the standpoint of educational policy, the utilization of this principle will be found exemplified in the announcement of courses for 1919-1920 of the New School for Social Research, New York.

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