ABSTRACT

We had no warrant to speak of ‘necessities of group existence’ or of ‘social advantages’ in an absolute sense. For so far our approach has been essentially relativistic. We have taken Explanation to mean the search for ‘invariant relations’ between facts; we viewed society and culture essentially as systems built out of interdependent parts; we were describing something in the nature of a vast machine where, could we only fully understand it, cogwheels drive cogwheels and levers press upon levers. Now precisely this simile has been used in criticism of all approaches to culture which similarly aim at the discovery of interdependences and ‘functional’ relations. Thus Linton blames anthropologists of this persuasion for seeing culture only as ‘a mass of gears all turning and grinding each other’—endlessly, confusingly, and presumably to no purpose. 433