ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with one kind of contribution that anthropology, particularly field studies of living primitive peoples, can make to our constructive understanding of the processes of evolution. It deals with some new ways in which we may participate in evolution. We—mankind —stand at the center of an evolutionary crisis, with a new evolutionary device—our consciousness of the crisis—as our unique contribution. Cultural evolutionism became identified with the viewpoint that within any given society there is an inevitable progression of invention and change, uninfluenced by borrowing of any sort. As adequate field work on primitive cultures and (within one area) knowledge of adjacent cultures plainly showed this viewpoint to be erroneous and nonsensical, the study of cultural evolution became arid and as unfashionable as was the study of Old World origins of New World traits, by way of Asia.
