ABSTRACT
The formulation of laws of culture has been a goal of anthropology from its inception. Underlying this aim was the belief that cultural phenomena were no different from other phenomena of nature, and existed within a framework of cause and effect. The classical evolutionists were well aware of it themselves, as were those few evolutionists who carried on their tradition into the twentieth century. The fact is that unilinear and multilinear evolution may be, and in fact are, manifested in the development of actual societies. The founders of British social anthropology, or at least of functionalism—Radcliffe-Brown and Malinowski—each had something to say about cultural laws. For almost half a century most American anthropologists dismissed the quest for laws of culture, often denying the possibility of their existence. As employed by nineteenth-century anthropologists, the comparative method was used largely for evolutionary reconstructions.
