ceptions of what constitutes progress expand with the expansion and integration of science, and our power to control our world for progressive ends grows with our increasing mastery of science.

But we are told that there are not and in the nature of things never can be any permanent and constant objectives in social progress. Such, of course, is the case, but this is quite different from saying that there is no progress. It is equally true that there are no permanent and constant or final and absolute facts and principles and ends in any science. All scientific laws merely generalize abstract norms for measurement of specific variations out of the concrete instances which exist within our view. Not only are the human social and historical facts or events separate individual facts. All the facts of nature are likewise individual and distinctive facts. That is a necessary correlate and consequence of the fact of a dynamic world; only in a static world could there be repetition or uniformity. Laws are not statements of uniformity,1o as staticminded people have said, but they are man-made static views of aggregates of changing and individual phenomena. And the laws retain their form as long as they constitute usable norms which serve as bases of correlation of variant events and phenomena as they must change in form and content when the phenomena which world through understanding it or in manipulating it. They change, first by evolving or in being formulated, and ultimately they must change in form and content when the phenomena which they generalize have changed. Those that are most general, that relate to complex and fluid phenomena, such as the social, must change more rapidly. Those which have to do with the slowly evolving physical world will change as only the physical world or universe itself changes, which is very slowly. Consequently, these laws appear to be fixed and unchanging, absolute, because the conditions basic to many of them outlast the history of man himself.11 But who can doubt that there have been many changes in the climate of the earth and that if there had been minds to formulate 10 C. A. Ellwood, Sociology in Its Psychological Aspects, pp. 73-80, appears to think otherwise, as do many other writers.

"But the conflict of laws which produced Einstein's principle of relativity as a means of correlation shows clearly that the truth of any law, even in physics, is only relative to the time and conditions for which it is formulated.

laws of climate in past geologic ages these climatic laws also would have changed or have merged in more inclusive principles which arise as the result of the broader perspective attained by students of geologic time? Laws of population, of production, and of the market also must undergo modification with changes in the relationship of man to climate and soil, and as changes in the density of population and in fauna and flora are brought about by changes in climate, the production of inventions, and the like. If we are able to merge these changing laws into ever more general and inclusive, and therefore less immediately variable, principles or formulas, this fact but illustrates the method of the growth of science and makes clear one of the methods of change.

The statements of the objectives and of the criteria of social progress are subject to the same principles of modification and development as the principles of science in general. There is a constant growth in the content of the theory of social progress. Objectives are becoming increasingly more ultimate and general, on the one hand, and also more specific and definite, on the other. The criteria of progress are being stated and defined just as fast as scientific investigation and generalization give us the data with which to formulate such criteria and objectives. Old criteria change, are modified by the utilization of new knowledge, on the one hand, and by the development of new adjustments to changing conditions of existence, on the other. Some of the conditions of existence change slowly and some rapidly, just as the phenomena which are generalized into the perspective of scientific laws change slowly or rapidly according to the types of phenomena which they are. Some criteria we discard altogether. Our objectives we revise constantly, but on the whole we approach to a better understanding of the criteria and objectives which will function over an increasingly longer period of time and for ever larger numbers of people. Out of this flux and modification there grows an increasing unity of understanding and purpose, which itself must undergo change, revision, integration, like the sciences upon which it is dependent. Through this science-content we also learn the limita- › tions to progress, as well as how to formulate its objectives and to control its realization. We may even learn that progress is not

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limitless, and we may be forced to face the fact that ultimately. regression may take the place of progress in spite of all the science we are now bringing to bear or can utilize in the statement of ends and criteria and for the control or the realization of progress." But whatever may be our ultimate fate, because the cosmos must dominate our world and ourselves, we can know it beforehand, prevision it, only through the aid of science, and hasten the good and retard the evil only through this same instrumentality.

It is not correct to say that there can be no general concept of progress, but only specific concepts of progress within limited fields. It is true that we must begin to formulate the laws of progress and to achieve their fulfilment in the realization of progress in the limited fields, such as medicine, agriculture, industry, engineering, which we have already learned to grasp conceptually. But a general concept of progress must inevitably grow out of these more limited concepts as scientific generalization expands and integrates our world in our understanding. In fact, an integrated and generalized concept of progress becomes a necessity in the modern complex world. It is the passion and the need of the age to see things whole, in the largest perspective of which we are capable. Science has, in a measure, brought the whole world into our view, and the perception of its conflicts and wastes have become unbearable. We must achieve harmony in some way. The religion of theology once gave us a sort of harmony and unity within the group and in a relatively simple world,13 but on the whole it was an unprogressive harmony and it never became world wide. Now, science embraces all men, both in perspective and in control, and the demand is that this wide reach of science shall be made effective in the production of a functioning social unity and in the projection of intelligent common ends. Sociology is in large measure a response to this demand for effective and functional unity in the world under the guidance of science.

And it is within the province of sociology as the science of organized human relationships to formulate the objectives and to

See author's article entitled "The Conditions of Social Progress," American Journal of Sociology, July, 1922.

13 See author's "Religion and Theology," The Monist, Jan., 1922.

state the criteria of social progress, although it is the function of the social worker and of the reformer rather than of the sociologist to apply these general principles of ends and values to the actual achievement of that progress. Gradually, through this elucidation of objectives and criteria of progress by sociology, we are able to see-to look into perspective, as it were, and to formulate in the generalized form of laws or principles-more definite, more inclusive, and more permanent social values, making for an understanding of social progress. But a general law of progress, at the same time definite and comprehensive, is not yet within our powers. Its achievement must come at the end of the process of scientific generalizing about society, not at its beginning. If there are those who maintain that sociology should not compromise her name-already somewhat besmirched, because she has sat wantonly in every science's doorway-by concerning herself with this new arrival in human interest, which has not yet found its bearings, I can only say that if this rule had always been followed there would now be no sociology, nor, indeed, any of the family of the sciences, for each of them has grown out of the most primitive and undifferentiated protoplasm of germinal thought and speculation and has achieved solidity and respectability only by ignoring the sneers of the high priests of the absolutes. No one who seeks a scientific concept of progress need be discouraged if he is familiar with the history of scientific method.

DIFFUSIONISM AND THE AMERICAN SCHOOL

OF HISTORICAL ETHNOLOGY1

BY ALEXANDER GOLDENWEISER

The New School for Social Research, New York City

ABSTRACT

Anti-evolutionary trend of modern ethnology: Modern research reveals the course of culture to be complex and varied rather than uniform; gradual at times but cataclysmic and revolutionary at others; progressive here and there, but only too often retrogressive and most of the time indifferent. Graebner and his school: Cultural contact to him is the problem of ethnology. In estimating cultural similarities he uses the quantitative and qualitative criteria which, he believes, apply no matter what the distance between the two cultural areas. Thus he comes to build up his hypothetical culture areas and cultural waves. Graebner was taken to task by critics for overestimating our ability to discern and evaluate cultural similarities, for his "mechanical" view of culture, and for his disregard of geographico-historical probabilities. W. H. R. Rivers' contribution: Rivers' position is superior to Graebner's in so far as he gives due weight to psychological factors, but he also is subject to the criticism of using the theory of diffusion as a dogmatic postulate, not a heuristic tool. "The Archaic Civilization" of G. Elliot Smith and W. J. Perry: In the hands of Elliot Smith and Perry the theory of diffusion becomes a reductio ad absurdum of the "historical" approach. American School of Historical Ethnology: Criticisms by Boas and his disciples of the theory of social evolution. Critical use of diffusion in restricted areas. Revision of the environmentalist theory. The theory of convergence. The concepts of culture areas, marginal areas, and culture centers.

THE ANTI-EVOLUTIONARY TREND OF MODERN ETHNOLOGY

All modern ethnology, with disappearingly few exceptions, builds upon the ruins of the classical evolutionary doctrine. Its tenets have been shattered to splinters. No anthropologist today believes in an orderly and fixed procession of cultural development. Not alone culture as a unit but each of its constituent elements, such as social organization, art, religion, is now known to change in ways that are diverse and complex.

Equally obsolete is the concept of gradual transformation ("by imperceptible gradations," as the evolutionist loved to put it). Not that slow changes have been proved to be non-existent, but experience with historic and prehistoric communities has shown that sudden mutations, cataclysmic and revolutionary, are wont to

1 This essay is based on a paper read before the Anthropological Section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Toronto, 1924.