THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE

Students of anthropology will find much to interest them and equally, much to irritate them, in this compendium on ""culturology"". This science goes one step beyond the confines of anthropology, which deals with the customs, social organizations, art forms, language, and so on, that have arisen among people. The step beyond, taken by the culturologists, is that they regard the sum total of these customs, social organizations, etc. as possessing an organic, dynamic existence of their own, implying almost the state of a Super-Being that influences profoundly the lives of the people who act as carriers. The author, professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan, has turned out an interesting book, but one that will exasperate sociologists and anthropologists by the casual, slightly patronizing manner with which some of their important postulates are examined and dismissed. Psychologists will not take kindly to being regarded as -- in the main- faddists and gadgeteers. Theologians will react violently to the denial of free will. And this reviewer has a private bone to pick with a writer who assembles a book by tacking together a number of magazine articles, written at different dates for different types of magazines, with no apparent attempt to prune and unify. The inevitable repetition, duplication of illustrations, use of the same set of quips would make any reader rebel.