Two Converging Lines of Influence in Cultural Evolutionary Theory

Abstract

A RECENT article Betty Meggers comments favorably on the view that I "all cultures are composed of three general classes of phenomena: technology, social organization, and philosophy" and that "of these, technology is primary and determines the content and form of the other two components."She believes that this "reduces the explanation of cultural development to the same terms that physicists use to describe the rest of nature: matter and energy" and that the content of any particular culture depends "on the amount of energy that can be controlled and the efficiency of the technological means of putting this energy to use" (1960:302-3).She tells us that "the law of energy and cultural evolution" was "first set forth" in 1943 by an American anthropologist.So far as I know, Leslie White, the anthropologist whom she names, has made no claim of priority or originality in respect to these doctrines, and I am sure he will not take it amiss if I call attention to the existence, long before this date, of such formulations and convictions.To begin our appraisal of theories about energy and technology with 1943 cuts us off from ideas and attitudes which I am convinced have been formative and significant for some of the tendencies in anthropology today.It would be surprising if, of all the natural scientists who dealt before 1943 with the transformation and control of power, not one concerned himself with the implications for culture of the harnessing of different forms and amounts of energy.Of course, this is not the case; and anyone who is at all familiar with scientific thought and developments of the late 19th and early 20th centuries will think a t once in this connection of the influential German chemist and Nobel laureate, Wilhelm Ostwald, who was interested enough in the relationship of energy to human affairs to espouse a doctrine with declared evolutionary implications which he called "energetics."lI call attention to the views of Ostwald not only because they indicate that the conception of a cultural evolution spurred by energy and technology occurred considerably earlier than some realize but because, in their fuller di- mension, they constitute a nexus of associated concepts, which coalesced during the industrial and scientific revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries and which continue as a force in the thinking of the 20th century.I n my opinion, anthropology, as well as other disciplines, has been and continues t o be significantly affected by this constellation of ideas.The impersonal quality of science and natural law, the reproducibility of experiments, and the fact that the products of science increasingly dwarf their creators in size, efficiency, and power tended to focus attention on culture as such, rather than on its [OPLER] Cultural Evolutionary Theory 525carriers.The dependence of science and technology on the conservation and communication of knowledge-on the development of common labels and vocabularies-dramatized the role of the symbol in culture building and stimulated the study of the relationship between language and culture.The success in probing the secrets of nature-the development through scientific research of marvels that overshadow even those pictured in Holy Writfostered an impatience with revelation and a generous optimism concerning what could be accomplished in man's interests through the application of science, conceived in practical form as the control and utilization of energy for human purposes.All of these tendencies and convictions are present in the writings of Ostwald and many of his contemporaries.Moreover, although Ostwald, as a chemist, translated the doctrines of the time into terms of energy, the tenets which have been summarized and which he held can be discerned just as readily in the work of the anthropologists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.Whether or not they were evolutionists, a large number of American anthropologists, including Lewis H. Morgan, John W. Powell, Clark Wissler, and Franz Boas, saw in man's growing rationality and application of knowledge to his problems the prospects of a happier and more abundant future.Lewis Morgan envisaged "experience, intelligence and knowledge" ushering in "democracy in government, brotherhood in society, equality in rights and privileges, and universal education (1877: 561-62).Powell was optimistic enough to predict a stage of Enlightenment that would follow mere Civilization (Hallowell 1960: 5 5 ) .Wissler saw mechanization, spurred by reflective thought and rationalization, as the glory of Western Civilization and the promise of things to come.Religious faith, in his view, was no longer one of the very significant factors in the western world; dependence on education and science had supplanted reliance on traditional beliefs (1923:5-10, 187-88, 32629, 361-64).We can turn as well to Franz Boas for echoes of scientism of this general order.The message of the 12th chapter of The Mind of Primitive Mun is that the transition from primitive life to civilization is essentially the substitution of actions performed as means to a rational end for behavior carried out in response to emotional associations.Thus impersonal control or science gradually displaces warm belief (1938: 239-42, 24&52).Nor do we have to search far to find indications in American anthropology of other elements of the idea cluster we are concerned with. A. L. Kroeber's delineation of the cultural realm and the relation of tools and symbols to its emergence is too well known to labor (1952:22-51).Robert Lowie, who, like Ostwald, was much influenced by Ernst Mach and who contributed the article on Mach to the 1924 edition of the Encyclopedia Americana, describes in an autobiographical note his "earlier anticlericalism" and that of his "elders and contemporaries" in the scientific world (Du Bois 1960:lO).Much more could be said about the manner in which American anthropologists reflected and shared the scientific postulates which grew up in the 19th century, but we are concerned at the moment with the particular organization of these ideas which Ost wald achieved.

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