ABSTRACT
Twenty-five years ago, Bateson (1936) suggested that eidos, the cognitive aspect of culture, could serve as an important focus of anthropological thought. His suggestion seems to have received little systematic attention. Perhaps the reason for this neglect lies not so much within anthropology itself as in the neighboring discipline of psychology. The “higher mental processes” have always been a part of psychology, but one who tried to follow Bateson’s suggestion in the 1930’s and 1940’s would have found that we had little to offer him. Most studies of thinking and remembering then being conducted seemed sterile and unrewarding, and were of interest only to specialists.
