ABSTRACT
In light of the comprehensive objective of anthropology to reveal the variety and depth of human existence, it should be clear that disciplined subjective interpretation always will be a part of the methodology. The descriptive element in cultural anthropology which permits the ready conversion of data into "stories" which in turn can become converted into myths and images of man. The relationship of these "mythic" qualities of anthropological research to theory construction and the notion of "a culture". Fact, theory, and myth are inextricably interwoven in nineteenth-century— and twentieth- century—science. Evolutionary theory was one of the great civilizing forces, as Loren Eiseley has pointed out in various writings. The mission of anthropology is not to write current history, of course, but its accumulated knowledge has much to say on the adaptive value of cultural traits and of course on the movements and directions of history, the major ideas and myths of the age.
