departure for a general theoretical analysis of the elements of history and culture.[1] To those interested in this once much cultivated but later somewhat neglected field, Professor Teggart’s recent little volume[2] comes as a welcome contribution indeed. In more than one way the essay is timely and significant, while its contents will arouse in the mind of the student of culture (from an ethnological angle) frequent approval as well as equally emphatic disagreement. What the author purports to do—and of that larger endeavor the tiny volume before us is but a modest precursor—is to demonstrate “what sort of results might be obtained by a strict application of the method of science to the facts of history” (p. v). From another standpoint, the greater work will be “an attempt to do for history what biologists are engaged in doing for the history of the forms of life” (ibid).
In the section on “The Nature and Scope of the Inquiry” we are informed that
Science is, fundamentally, a method of dealing with problems, and the initial step in any scientific undertaking is the determination of the problem to be investigated (p. 1).
The problem, then, in this humanistic inquiry is to ascertain “how man everywhere has come to be as he is” (p. 5). This formulation becomes the author’s Leitmotiv, and thus we find it repeated many times in the course of the discussion (e.g., on pp. 18, 25, 38, 90). Without much difficulty, in crisp and perfectly convincing statements, the author disposes of the physical, psychological, and climatic or environmental hypotheses, which have at various times
- ↑ “History, Psychology and Culture; Some Categories for an Introduction to Social Science,” Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, vol. xv (October 10 and 22, 1918). See discussions by: Charles A. Ellwood, ibid., January 30, 1918; Frederick J. Teggart, ibid., March 13, 1918; H. D. Sheldon, ibid., July 5, 1918. A. L. Kroeber’s article, “The Possibility of a Social Psychology,” American Journal of Sociology, vol. xxiii (1918), pp. 633-651; and H. K. Haeberlin’s acute analysis of Wundt, “The Theoretical Foundations of Wundt’s Volk-Psychology,” The Psychological Review, vol. xxiii (1916), pp. 279-302, should be consulted in this connection.
- ↑ The Processes of History. By Frederick J. Teggart, Yale University, New Haven (1918), pp. ix + 162. See the same author’s “Prolegomena to History,” University of California Publications in History, vol. iv, no. 3 (Berkeley, 1916), and A. L. Kroeber’s discussions (cited above.).
