ABSTRACT
The purpose of these notes is to clarify the conceptual tools with which we describe facts, not to present new facts. More particularly, their aim is to make clear the important distinction between the systems of rules of conduct which govern the behaviour of the individual members of a group (or of the elements of any order) on the one hand and, on the other hand, the order or pattern of actions which results from this for the group as a whole.2 It does not matter for this purpose whether the individual members which make up the group are animals or men,3 nor whether the rules of conduct are innate (transmitted genetically) or learnt (transmitted culturally). We know that cultural transmission by learning occurs at least among some of the higher animals, and there can be no doubt that men also obey some rules of conduct which are innate. The two sorts of rules will therefore often interact. Throughout it should be clearly understood that the term ‘rule’ is used for a statement by which a regularity of the conduct of individuals can be described, irrespective of whether such a rule is ‘known’ to the individuals in any other sense than that they normally act in accordance with it. We shall not consider here the interesting question of how such rules can be transmitted culturally long before the individuals are capable of stating them in words and therefore of explicitly teaching them, or how they learn abstract rules ‘by analogy’ from concrete instances.
