LOGIC SOCIAL OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF SELF

A.H. KAMALI

Modern Social theory, since its very inception with a bold positivistic programme, has been irreconcilable to the basic demands and dimensions of the social reality, for its uncritical formalization arourd the category of "Nature"; Nature idealized as a field of linear causation or that a blind and relentless transaction of forces, the one yielding an evolutionary image, the other a mechanistic model of the universe. Whatever picture of the universe, evolutionary or mechanistic, a social scientist adopts, one finds him internalizing the idea of 'Nature' in his thinking. Internalization and attendant universalization this idea seeks in social science of our time, are hinderances to the adequate access to all the facets of the societal system. The positivistic programme fails on that account in several respects. Its failure is most conspicuous, when it tries to theorize about ethical, aesthetic and other associated phenomena in the folds of the social sciences. Whenever one tries to understand a thing in terms of the compositive forces which are responsible for its genesis, continuity and growth, one is just in possession of a half truth. The other half is its value-dimension. The thing carries some importance, bears upon its shoulder some value, or represents a motif, or embodies a meaning in its presentativeness. Perception of the contents of experience, when follows the logic of Nature, and advances on the techniques which are relevant to causal and interactional analysis, simply naturalizes the whole of the phenomena. To such a complete "naturalization," i.e. perception of everything in terms of the vector of forces, the philosophy of self cannot agree, for its complete neglect of the perception of value in the actual process of the world. Max Weber, by his guiding definition identifies sociology with a "worth-free science" and thus as a methodological principle naturalizes its theoretic frame of reference. It means that sociology is bound to perceive every instance, or piece of social reality, in the category of "Natural Growth". This may go on indefinitely; but it should be clear that from this mode of vision, the urge for ideal, which is innate to the life of the self, and contributes some important elements to the societal system, becomes completely oblivious.

Value consciousness is as much a 'positively' given fact as the natural origin of an event. The logic of the Natural Sciences cannot meet the objectivity of this positive fact. And therefore Sociology, as it adopts the methods and techniques of the natural sciences cannot assimilate the data, which constitute the value dimension of the Society, hence need for a new Science.

The new Science which may proceed on to objectify the value-aspect of the societal system i.e. the cultural system must have a logic of its own. Its logic must be adequate enough to select those contents of experience which somehow or other represent the pervasion of value in the category of the social reality. Such a logic is the demand of the philosophy of self. When the logic of natural science approach is supplemented by this new logic, then alone, we may have an adequate mapping, and theoretical formulation of the Totality of the social system, which is at once, a cultural system and a natural system.

Following paper is an attempt in this direction. It takes into account the germinal social sciences, Anthropology and Sociology, which try to claim the whole area of society in their domain. It tries to clarify their logical intents, by propounding the present state of affairs and their logical meanings; then, it goes on to distinguish the laws of structure and the laws of culture, as basic groups of theoretic intents in the field of social inquiry. This attempt results in two kinds of logic for social reality, to be incorporated as necessary tools in the philosophy of self for the domain of positive research so as to lead to a comprehensive theory about man, universe, and the whole of reality.

It is of interest to examine Anthropology in the background of Sociology, for it is in this examination that inconsistencies and equivocations of the modern social theory are thoroughly exposed. The monopolarity of social thinking i.e. its fixation only on one pole of perception (Nature), rather than on the two poles, as the social reality is itself axialized, produces one of the most startling situations ever conceivable in the basic sciences. Either there is only one science; or anthropoligical researches are merely a phase of the sociological research. This situation can be harmonized by logical determination of the category of culture as posited against or over and above the category of Nature. It means that the logic which guarantees the individuality, distinct survival and growth of anthropology has a locus standi quite different from that of sociology. Our task is to develop that logic.

The conclusions are veritable aspects of the philosophy of self, as it transforms into the philosophy of society, philosophy of science, and philosophy of culture.

I

Anthropology, as its etymology suggests, is the 'Science of man'. But, its very nomenclature is provocative and breeds conflict, for the founders of sociology already anticipated in their own science the culmination of all knowledge about man. Comte's heirarchy of sciences assigned to sociology the function of total study of man; Astronomy, Physics, Chemistry, Physiology and Social Physics all arranged in a historical as well as in a logical order, exhausted for him the set of sciences. Spencer conceived in Sociology an all-embracing synthesis of the entire human phenomena. Thus, beyond Sociology there was no prospect of any Anthropology; Sociology itself was Anthropology. Crowned as the queen of all sciences at the hands of W.F. Small, it expected that all departmental science would submit, to its high office, fruitful conclusions. All known phenomena and partial theories would be then reproduced and synthesised in a coherent and comprehensive knowledge about man in the development of this science.

Now, appearance of Anthropology was to institute a challenge to its high authority. But there were other factors which delayed the unavoidable conflict, latent in the development of the former side by side with that of the latter.

Although it was bound to an empirical content i.e. to human society, sociological science was fashioned on 'apriorism'. Some major premise about human nature in general combined with a minor premise about the dynamics of life was thought sufficient for deduction of the entire course and structure of human organizations, and societies. There were obvious limitations to this approach: it is practically near to impossible to exactly deduce the total determinations of a concrete event, a here and now, from some general premise. Theoretical sociologist must always remain at the level of abstraction. But, it is important to grasp that from 'Apriorism,' sociological thought moved towards the models of physics and chemistry; and as the Neo-Kantians put the matter, the latter group of sciences being 'generalizing' in essence as they were by their very technique, are unfit to deal with the 'individualized' reality. We may agree with the Neo-Kantians or not, it is, however, beyond doubt that sociology, from its very inception, had a definite orientation to deal with generalities. It is also a historical fact that sociology was classed in the group of the natural science in as much as it had to discover the universal laws of human societies. Physics and chemistry as Sciences were supposed to discover general laws of the inorganic nature.

Anthropology on the contrary, had its origin in the company of such disciplines that were not enlisted with sciences. Foremost among them was history. Those who were interested in narratives and fine arts took history, literature and archaeology. But, Modern Philosophers of Science, Leibnitz and Descartes, never took them seriously. It should not go unnoticed that Kant's work was primarily a philosophy of physics; and his philosophy of categorical imperative was the culmination of what could be said about man. Literature, poetry and history were conceived of as artifacts, not sciences. And Anthropology had its origin in their soil.

Historical narratives have to stop after many intervals atlast on or about 2400 B.C. and cannot proceed further. Anthropology made its appearance, primarily as an investigation in pre-history. Archaeology was also digging the past, but Anthropology came with a different programme.

An Archaeologist digs the earth to discover the remains; samples collected from a site are seriated in accordance with the layers of the deposits in which they are found; then they are seen in the ensemble of the remains of the same layer. The types of the artifacts, the typical characteristics of the ensembles determine 'the type of the people living there and Set iation determines their order of existence in time. Definite principles of stratigraphy have been evolved to bring to record the prehistoric past. Now, the important difference between history in general and archaeology may be noted: history in general orders the seriation in accordance with chronology; it has to record every particular event (historically relevant) on the cross-section of space-time continuum it is a systematic account of the singular happenings. But, archaeology, has a different direction; in accordance with the documents it has to re. construct the past. These documents are 'externalities', 'presentations', and 'artifices' of the people: their pottery, vessels, ruined dwellings, and streets. Archaeology cannot know more than the state of their knowledge in technology, the 'manner' of their arrangements and decorations, the plans of their ecological settings. To such a kind of knowledge, which is unable to record singular events, but can reconstruct the manners, the styles, the arts and techniques of people is given the name of cultural History.  A cultural history is .a programme determined by the nature of the 'contents' yielded in archaeology. It can simply discover the outer linings of a people, their abstract ways of living; their 'material' expressions. Historical inquiry can be extended over to the oblivious past in the form of this chequered discipline, i.e. the Cultural History. Tylor, the founder of anthropology remarks, "if the field of inquiry be narrowed from history as a whole to that branch of it which is here called culture, the history, not of the tribes or nations, but of the conditions of knowledge, religion, art, custom, and the like among them, the task of investigation proves to lie within far more moderate compass….[1]

And to this moderate compass, Tylor and Morgan add a new mode of inquiry and area of research. Tylor formulated his conviction, basic to his new mode of research, in 1888 as follows: "the institutions of man are distinctly stratified not unlike the earth on which he lives. They succeed each other in series, substantially uniform over the globe"^. And Morgan, another founder of Anthropology expressed: "like the successive geological formations, the tribes of mankind may be arranged, according to their relative conditions, into successive strata. When thus arranged with some degree of certainty they reveal the entire range of human progress from savagery to Civilization."[2] These quotations round off the whole programme and technique of anthropology as it was visualized by its founders. It was definitely a branch of historiography addressed to prehistory, but with more concrete advantages over and above archaeology as its field was given in the form of the living societies; the data taken over from them could fill the general outlines provided by archaeological research:

II

The new mode of inquiry in pre-history by studying the small societies scattered over different regions of the globe, each exhibiting a level in the^. history of mankind, presupposed a linear theory of human evolution that mankind is at different levels at different^- places of the same ladder of evolution. The 'aboriginals' and 'primitives' are reminiscent of the earlier stages of the evolving humanity which has touched its highest mark in the unfolding of the Western Society.

In spite of Questionable validity, the hypothesis of linear evolution gave tremendous fillip to the study of primitive societies in the hope of providing missing links of social evolution comparable to the researches to find out the 'fossil man' and 'primates' to complete the seriality of biological evolution. Ethnographical expeditions were, consequently, organized with all seriousness; the ages of dependence on tourists' diaries, explorers' narratives, and missionaries accounts were gone with the first hand collection of facts about the conditions of natives and savage societies.

Ethnographical expeditions could not be handicapped like those of the archaeological excavations to be limited only to the state of arts and conditions of dwellings, styles of temples, images and other artifacts. Full-fledged, living and moving human communities were before the gaze of the field-worker. He could collect all types of human data, social, inter-personal, institutional, economic, and political without any restriction.

This could be a source of conflict between anthropology andsociology, but the linearity hypothesis was accomplishing a division of scope between them. Anthropology seemed to occupy a seat between biology and sociology, specializing in the borderline regions lying between the "primates" and the mature 'social systems' of mankind. `Primitive Mind was being delineated into a specific category filled with a distinguishing content of its own in the upward trend of human evolution. Comte's evolutionism with mythological  —  Metaphysical positive stages, Tylor's Scheme of movement from Savagery, Barbarism to Civilization tended towards definite categorization of social and intellectual evolution of the mankind. Identified with the study of primitive mentality, with the pre-civilized phases of human evolution, Anthropology could be differentiated from Sociology in respect of its empirical content thereby avoiding the always inevitable conflict with the latter. Malenesians, Zunis, Todas, Eskimos came to prominence as  worthy objects of studies relevant for this science.

The idea of static human nature meanwhile was subjected to serious strain by Beard, Veblen and Dewey in the United States, and the German thinkers were gradually moving towards dynamic Conceptions of human reality. Max Weber vouchsafed that the Categories and thestructure of mind are also subject to Change. Durkheim and LevyBruhl conceived Quantitative change in the evolution of nature.  Prelogical mind and logical mind, collective consciousness and evolving individual consciousness, mechanical solidarity and organic solidarity in these and similar binary concepts, these thinkers and others including Westermark and Hobhouse defined the whole range of human and social evolution. Primitive mind and savage society were thus conceived of as conditioned by mechanical solidarity, pre-logical consciousness and collective morality. This is the story how a qualitatively differentiated content was singled out for the junior science of anthropology. Now it seemed possible that Anthropology not only in respect of tendency but also in respect of objective reality could occupy a domain discriminable from that of sociology. Both the disciplines were further differentiated from one another on the basis of distinctions in methodological convention. Theoretical orientation from the general to the particular in the case of sociology and direction from particular to the general in case of anthropology contributed to their peculiar distinctiveness from each other. Anthropology was attached to 'ideographic method, and sociology to 'genero-graphic' method.

III

Distinctions in contents combined with separate methodological conventions would have been sufficient to make Sociology and Anthropology really separate and mutually autonomous Sciences, but for some vital cross-currents that worked for their cementations. Empirical tendencies in the sociological science had never been completely subdued; with the development of theory, problems of its empirical evidence and its readjustment to the requirements of observation necessitated increasing borrowing of factual material in its corpus. Methodological programme of many sociologists enunciated priority of field observation, and by way of abstraction establishment of generalizations. It is generally agreed, "that the late W.I. Thomas of the University of Chicago, with his publication of the 'Source Book of Social Origins' in 1909 was the first sociologist to introduce new foundations of scientific thinking, stressing the necessity of Concrete, Objective, detailed studies of simple societies which would throw light on the more intricate behaviour patterns and on the development of Social institutions in modern complex societies[3]" Franklin H. Giddings, Stuart Chaplin, E.W. Burgess and ES. Bogardus were among the first to organise classroom courses (1912-1918) in the U.S.A. providing training in concrete field methods of Study.[4] This development was bound to have far-reaching consequences. It meant field techniques, social surveys, mass interviews, group tests, and switch over to statistical model. Sociological approach came gradually in this way closer to the anthropological. But anthropology itself could not remain at the plane of mere observation; its exponents felt a tendency towards generalization. Its descriptive propositions were to be assimilated in terms of the explanatory propositions. This resulted in heavy borrowing of sociological theories, and explanatory models from all other sciences. easily accessible to ethnographers. Classification of sociological conceptions and examination of the nature of sociological inquiry resulted, although gradually, in a new development. It moved from the 'secondary status of a synthetic science to the position of a basic science. Now, it began to appropriate fundamental and universal modes of sociaiion; and its subject-matter became co-extensive with every phenomenon of 'social formation'. This change of outlook made the anthropological content, i.e. primitive mentality, a part of the subject matter of the basic science of society.

In fact, the two sciences were never separated in France. Hubert and Maus accomplished excellent works difficult to categorize as Anthropology or Sociology. Durkheim refused to admit their division, and took them as part of a 'single inquiry', with the same concepts and operating on the same material: Empirical side ethnography and Theoretical side sociology. Important contribution to the study of religious phenomena by the French Scholars[5] were punctuated by theoretical conclusions on the basis of ethnographical data. These works demonstrate the mergence of one content with the other; accession of anthropology to sociology.

Emergence and wide use of analytical procedure, realized in the reduction of complex social phenomena to simple components, accentuated by the methodological inventory of 'Social types' in the design of 'The Elementary Forms of religion' one of the masterpieces of Durkheim, led to new models of sociological construction with very far-reaching implications. Primitive societies in the new models were treated as expressions of the simple forms of social developments and therefore an inquiry into their simple structures  —  the forms of the savage life  —  became indispensable and fundamental part of sociological scholarship. Maus was thoroughly in the steps of Durkheim in disallowing alienation of ethnography from sociology. His work 'Les variations saisonniers dans les Societies eskimo', is both ideographical and theoretical.

British scholars, in the meantime were labouring under the linear evolutionary hypothesis. Westermark was always interested in the general science of the (developing) social phenomenon; and his 'Origin of Human Marriage', and 'The Origin and Development of Moral Ideas' were hailed as contributions to sociological literature while they could also be assigned to the vague science of anthropology. The Britishers as it has been said above, till the late thirtees always revealed an evolutionary outlook of social phenomenon which was amenable to one single science of Sociology without delineating an anthropological science within its general limits. Hobhouse's 'Mind in Evolution' provided schematic organization of the human and sociological material for the British academic circles. Along with Wheeler and Ginsberg, Hobhouse prepared "the Material Culture and Social Evolution of the Simpler People". Profusely documented, as it were, this work unequivocally demonstrated that anthropology could never be separated, in the British tradition, from sociology. Hobhouse was convinced that sociology is a synthetic science, and Ginsberg always takes it to be a synoptic science.

IV

Historical scholarship is a distinctive quality with the German researchers in almost all the fields of humanitarian thought and ideographic work in economics, politics, mythologies, linguistics and religion forms their outstanding contribution. But, Dilthey showed the path of structural approach, and psychology was already a-historical since long. George Simmel, Ferdinend Tonnies and Max Weber were moving towards formalism. Sociology was becoming a study of all the forms of sociation. The general category of sociation as has been told earlier was conceived to have associative and disassociative process in its classification. Max Weber's innovation of 'ideal types' applicable to all the fields in social inquiry meant that all the possibilities of associations and disassociations must be constructed, and Applied Sociology should have to operate with theoretical constructs yielded thereby. Ethnography in representing the actual structure of communities was intellectualized as an extension of the applied sociology, and so could not be logically established as a new field of inquiry. Thus in Germany, also there is no discipline that could be identified as Anthropology.

In Britain, however, Anthropology has enjoyed a distinction of its own in spite of theoretical failures to differentiate it from sociology. There have been professional scholars entitled as anthropologists. The distinction lies in the division of labour, without a 'logical division' of either object matter or of mode of inquiry. Work on the remote societies needs a full time jcb; and those who are in this business are easily identified as anthropologists. Codrinton, Seligman, Rivers, Malinowski, Forces, Firth and their students did field work but as an essential phase towards theoretical sociology.

V

All the above developments lead to one general conclusion: If there could be an autonomous science of anthropology, it would have been possible only on the linear hypothesis of evolution, on the basis of which it could be allocated those forms of society for study which are substantially and qualitatively lower than those studied by sociology and have been remarkable from that point of evolution where-from individual consciousness and organic unification grow out from the collectivistic cohesiveness of the earlier modes of life of man and his societies.

But, the hypothesis of Linear Evolution, popular in the Hegelian, Spencerian and Marxian thought and strengtnened for a time by the Darwinian Evolutionism could not hold ground for long even in Biology. Julian Huxley writes, "A century and a half ago, it was generally accepted, even by professional naturalists that nature represented a single scale culminating in man. There existed, they supposed, a ladder of life, each rung of which represented by a different type of animal, with humanity as the highest of all. From this point of view, each kind of living creature represented merely a step on the way to man, its nature and incomplete realization of human nature. But, with further study, especially after it was illuminated by the theory of evolution a wholly different and more interesting picture emerged. The various types of animals  — insects, fish, crustaceans, birds and the rest  —  could not be thought of as the rungs of one ladder, the steps of a single staircase, they now appeared as the branches of a tree, the overgrowing tree of evolving life…It might still be that man was the summit of the whole; but he was at the top of the tree only by being at the top of one particrlar branch. There existed many other branches, quite different in their nature, in which life was working out its ends in a different way from that she had adopted in the human branch[6]".

Representation of this new picture of human life carries with it the image, as a logical correlate, that social evolution is branching, evolving autonomous societies, unique in their character, spreading outwardly according to their own forms of movement and developing in their own way as the several branches of a tree grow and flourish. Eskimos, Zunis, Toda, Gunds, Assyrians, Babilonians, Egyptians, Greeks and Modern Western Society cannot be arranged in one line cf evolution. This conception shakes to foundation the very subject-matter of Anthropology so far as it is conceived of as dealing with the earlier forms of social evolution. The societies it studies, the so-called `primitives' are not in continuity with the contemporary societies but are specimen of some other societies, now extinct. They may represent some points of evolution of the societies of which they are instances hence no more primitive in character. Repudiation of linear theory deprives anthropology of its individuality, of the uniqueness of its subject-matter that it studies the `Collectives' composed of 'pre-logical minds' representing as it does, the earlier stages of the so called unidirected singly oriented social evolution.

Sorokin remarks,…" in order for a linear motion or change to be possible, the changing unit must either be in an absolute vacuum, free from interference of external forces, or these forces throughout the whole process of change must remain in such a 'miraculous balance that they mutually and absolutely neutralize one another at any moment and they permit the changing unit to move for ever in the same main direction evidently both of these hypothesis are factually impossible…even material bodies are under the influence of at least two main forces: inertia and gravitation, which change their rectilinear or uniform motion into a circular or curvilinear motion When we consider that man, society and culture are much more complex 'bodies', that they are subject to the influence of inorganic, organic and sociocultural forces, their linear change throughout the whole historical time becomes still improbable. Add to this undeniable fact that each of these `Units of change' itself incessantly changes in the process of its existence and thus tends to upset the direction of the change and the assumption of eternal linearity of change becomes impossible.[7] These logical observations strengthened by Sharif's observations[8] also prove threatening to Anthropology if it tries to justify its claims on the basis of the concept of linearity.

VI

Independent (lines of) development of different societies leads to the principle of Societal Pluralism as the main stay of all scientific constructs implying work on the classification of all 'social species' as there is a classification of bio-species which exist in nature contemporaneously.

There are changes, evolutions, and variations within the species but the species `themselves' exist side by side, and have no 'temporal' connection of succeeding each other. Therefore, the evolutionary model of social theory must yield to the non-evolutionary model of structure analysis, Species being contemporaneous, demand non-evolutionary but dynamic "formen" in their approach. Chances of change in a species of any given order of existence submit to various alternate or partially alternate sets of combinatory patterns of variation; a case indeterminate ontologically and unpredictable epistemically.

Behaviour of a natural system as subject to exact measurement in its future course presupposes an irreducible general condition that it would abide by the requirements of an already known pattern continuously. General conditions of its patterning are ontic in character and constitute a novel fixation in the nature of an open system hindering so far as they exist the growth of those future developments, which do not accord with them. If the fixation of a pattern of events is not predetermined, however, in the initial nature of the system to which they belong, it constitutes a uniqueness, an irreducible designation in nature. The evolving structure splits itself up into rival fixations simultaneously emerging and growing into further alternation and unique determinations. Consequently the hypothesis of evolution is modified by the principle of irreducible developments that do not admit explanation in terms of the former states of the system.

Historical course of life as it passes through the emergence of `unique' patterning implies that the analysis of a given state of the system not only involves (1) the component factors but (2) the a-historical principle of unique patterning such that it cannot be searched out in the precedent conditions for its pre-determination in the nature of 'evolving reality. At every stage of nature, at the becoming of every novel formation, a 'break' in evolutionary continuity is witnessed and it should be taken into consideration independent of the evolution itself. This requirement involves that a Philosophico-Scientific approach must include in its empirical orientation a model of the specific organization of the system that has emerged. This sort of approach shall necessarily be morphological rather than evolutionary and shall represent the 'emergent' structure or organisation that has appeared at the plane of natural actuation. Its methodological device shall be factorial analysis. If in a chain of evolution, every link is uniquely designated and is manifestly inexplicable, then it is merely an a-historical juxtaposition arranged in an order of temporality. An evolutionary model shall be broken into non-evolutionary models replacing each other in a Temporal Succession. Many simultaneous models of arrangements of the same set of agents give rise to let us denote it, comparative morphology, or the science of comparative forms.

What has been achieved in comparative biology or comparative psychology is simply this: the skeleton, physiological-structures, nervous organization and behavioural patterns of the organisms, all paralleled discontinuities indeed, can be arranged on a graduation scale with lacuna here and there. But that A in the scale of complexity is at a lower place than B does not demonstrate that ontically A has its genetic origin in B. Although it may be said that there is nothing at present to resist this conclusion, but it may also not be denied that the researches do not compel us to accept the evolutionary hypothesis of genetic origin. Comparative Biology simply points out graduation and continuity in complexity and even after the reclamation of the missing links which are supposed to fill up the gaps, the idea of continuous evolution of one species from the other will not be demonstrable with logical certainty. It will equally show continuity of discontinuities. Beyond that as to the genetic origin of a particular species, whether biological or social, this will not enlighten us any more than we are used to now.

It seems that (1) Comparative studies of the forms and (2) morphological analysis are the only scientifically relevant approaches which seem to be philosophically valid and put a check on uncautioned hypostatization.

Social order is unique determination in the world: it constitutes a specific category. But to conceive of it as a formation from a certain point of evolution continuously developing into levels after levels in linearity is not a correct judgement. On the other hand, it means a direct fall in the clutches of the dogmatic evolutionism of the nineteenth century. Morphological conception demands that different societies must be conceived of as novel determinations open in the very possibility of the emergence of the Social Category of Being.

Developing into alternate forms, societal systems ate mutually differentiated in respect of their unique and unprecedented patternings. They exist and are contemporaneous. Contemporality does not mean, however, that they occupy the same geophysical moment of time on the globe. Toynbee makes a dubious case for contemporality by placing it on the fact that all civilizations have sprung up during the last six-thousand years which is so small a span in relation to the natural history of the earth stretching to billions of years that it is almost equal to a pin-point or the 'one single day'. Contemporality has deeper meanings; it indicates that the existence of the serial moments in succession on the Geophysical temporal system is accidental to societies and must abstracted away. Then, they are contemporaneous in real sense of the word; and even though they have appeared one after another in the Chronicles of mechanical time it does not change their essence for they are not in the logical relation of mutual succession. This analysis leads to a decisive refutation of the division of empirical contents between Anthropology and Sociology. Breakdown of the evolutionary linearity into comparative morphology of societies means repudiation of the so-called distinct fields of these sciences based on evolutionism.

VII

`Structural analysis' so characteristic of physics and chemistry not only begins to reshine in biology, but re-emerge in social studies. In the form of history-writing, it has been almost every time present in dealing with human affairs; but as a philosophically justified mode of approach it has come with Dilthey, who felt Societal Pluralism apparently indifferent to the propagation of evolutionism. He tried to outline a typology of society, with the obvious intention to use the `basic type' of a society as the law of patterning unique to that society. Typological schemes of different societies like that of Dilthey's Lebens systeme, Nohl's Stil, 'Euclidean Man', Danilevskey's 'Solitary types' and 'Transmittable Types', Spenglerr's 'Appolinian Man', 'Faustian Man' and 'Magian Soul', Sorokin's prototypes of `Ideational' Idealistic' and 'Sensate' Societies all are efforts towards a-historical broader formulations of 'Social Species'.

These approaches integrate typical ethnographical methodology  —  in the form of historiography of peoples  —  with the general sociological approach of theoretical treatment. Every unit of study is an irreducible sein like larva in biology; its morphological changes are studied; some larvas are three-stage, others are five-stage and still others are seven-stage developments. All these developing larvas exist in a-historicity in relation to each other, exhibiting their own prototypes.

Use of singular propositions in the broader compass of General propositions cuts across the division of 'theoretical science' and 'fieldwork studies' and makes constant reference to the unit of studies. Not the individual persons, nor even human relations, but the whole society as a 'Type' has to be kept in the focus of investigation. This type of approach is essentially a revolution of the type of comparative morphology in biology after the atmospheric blight of evolutionism in theoretical sciences about man.

Boas, Malinowsky and their colleagues performed tasks similar to that of the philosopher-historians as they studied whole societies in their ethnographical works. The unit of study was the whole 'social structure'; all data were collected to fit in the Totality cf social organization; the concept of linearity was discardcd to study every protctype of society in its givenness and for its own sake.

Now the real situation was: those who professed themselves as anthropologists were different from the sociologists only so far as they were primarily concerned with specific phenomena; their method was 'case-study', in the formulation they indispensably included the singular propositions; while the sociologists were not bound to this approach; specific phenomena they cited only for instantiation and nothing else. Anthropologist's primary frame-of-reference was social whole, but sociologist's primary reference was the forms of 'Sociation'.

It was Malinowski, who introduced the term of 'functional whole' in the ethnological works and since then social structure has become the central frame of reference with British Anthropologists. Brown, Lloyd Warner, Evans-Pritchard, Fortes and many others have extensively utilized the concepts pertaining to sociological inquiry in their intensive studies of single societies. and this sariety of science is called by them 'Social Anthropology'. The idea of 'social wholeness' has been the leading heuritsic concept with them. But it does not give a distinctive characteristic to anthropological approach; for a social structure is exhaustively reducible to social relations also; if not to primary, to secondary relations . Consequently, the construct of social whole or social structure is not a distinguishable category in its own right, and as such there is no scope for the development of a new science within its formulations. Sociology and sociology alone is capable of grappling with the complexity of its existence. Moreover, all the particular social processes and interpersonal relations are to be constructed out of the theoretical propositions of sociology. Therefore an ethnographer recording social structure can be none other than a sociological field-worker.

VIII

The problem of search for a distinguishable objective content to justify its autonomous survival encounters anthropology almost every time. Direct initiation of field-studies, introduction of projective techniques, group surveys, and case study methods have been taken over by the Sociologists and thus has come to an end the only mark of distinction that could be had by the ethnologist.

But, in the United States, however, anthropology does not admit an open mergence with sociology. The original archaeological retraint to study such transmitable systems as arts and state of knowledge, technology and styles of arrangement has always been there in the American development of the Science. It has always developed there in close contacts with archaeology, and more or lest, has been a part of historiography. Evolutionism was violently disrupted by the philosophy of functional wholes of Malinowski and Brown to introduce a-historical time-less character in the structural analysis of the British Social Anthropology, but, in the U.S.A. overthrow of linear evolution meant a more faithful archaeological and ethnographical research. "In short", explains Boas, "the method we try to develop is based on a study of the dynamic changes in society that may be oberved at the present time.”[9] Boas stated theoretical principle of the cultural an' thropology in the following words: "If we e try to understand what the people are at the present time, we have to inquire into their descent. We must consider the climatic and geographic changes that have occurred. All these have no relations to the laws that may govern the inner life of society. They are accidents. Culture can be understood only as an historical growth. It is determined to a great extent by outer occurrences, that do not originate in the inner life of the people"[10]

There are two important factors to be reckoned in the whole United States tradition of anthropological studies: (1) The internalization of the archaeological deterrant as a regulative principle; (2) understanding Society and its present functioning by referring it back to the past. The present is conceived of as a natural growth in the course of time, and therefore a naturalistic and causal explanation of the 'present' is an inevitable requirement of the methodological technique of anthropology. Lowie and White stress on the uniqueness of the historical occurrence and Boas was typically anti-theoretical although was never against generalizations based on the comparative studies of different people.

Historical reconstruction in the light of the regulative principle of archaeological restraint necessitates selection of data that are persistent and repetitive. Uniqueness of historical episodes integrated with the emphasis on permanent and recurrent events yields the notion of the patterns of society. The American anthropologists are not interested in events but in the patterns of events. The idea of culture comprises of the repeating patterns of events in the history of a people. But, the entire phenomenon of recurrence and continuity of patterns and the occurrence of unique events has been seen by and now in the light of natural growth as an outcome of historical series. This view implies that culture and society are somewhat identical and should be explained by the same set of causal line.

The causal explanation takes the route of historiography (Lowie and Boas) or directly grounds itself in the bio-psychic structure of human organism (Malinowski and Brown). The approach is one or the other, it makes no difference, for in every case it is basically causal and 'naturalistic'. American Cultural Anthropology and British Social Anthropology have been thus naturalistic, and their naturalism stems from seeing the evolution of society and culture as from the basic human propensities and the laws of mind  —  the flux of natural tendencies of human organism. Consequently, it is also of little difference whether the social institutions are studied in their structure or the institutionalized behaviour  —  the responses of persons as they are stratified is studied.. Therefore, when the British Scholars like Firth remark that 'there is no essential difference between contemporary British Social Anthropology and the best American work[11], they are quite correct. Firth says, "Society emphasizes the human component, the people, and the relations between them; culture emphasizes the component of accumulated resources, non-material which the people through social learning have acquired and use, modify and transmit"[12]. This aspect of Social inheritance to be sure has never been absent from the works of the 'Social Anthropologists' as they have already grasped the accumulated resources of society under the concepts of 'repetitive behaviour', 'Social organization', etc.

IX

A real break occurs in the naturalistic tradition as with Kroeber, Cluckhohn and their followers, in whom American Anthropology plans to become real Culturalogy in intention. The break has been remarkably expressed in these words. "Behaviour is never Culture", says Cluckhohn, "rather, concrete behaviour or habits are part of the raw data from which we infer and abstract Culture''.[13]

At another place he writes, "the most specific quality of anthropological research arises from its preoccupation with Culture. This concept (in the technical anthropological sense) refers to those selective ways of feeling, and reacting that distinguish one group from another — ways that are socially transmitted and learned (with of course, some change through time) by each new generation. In the strict sense, we can speak of culture only when there are two or more objectively possible and functionally effective means or modes of meeting the same need (for example shelter, choice and preparation of food, weaning of children), and a given group exhibits a consistent and stylized preference for one path to the goal among a number of alternatives that are — from the observer's point of view — all open. A culture is not merely a congeries of customs. One cannot grasp the network of selective principle unless one understands the core values, the cognitive assumptions and what the logician calls the 'primitive Categories'.[14]

About the range of cultural data Kroeber says, "Sociology, economics, government and jurisprudence investigate social, economic political and legal functionings, particularly in our own or other advanced civilizations. Anthropology tries to formulate the interactions of these more special activities within the total culture of which they form a part, and equally, so, whether the culture be high or low, present or past's…."[15]

Following theoretical points are thus clarified:

1.                   Culture does not refer to the bio-psychic bases of behaviour and their crystallization in habitual activities, but rather to a new order — the system of values.

2.                   All the contents of the world can be seen in the light of the cultural problem, from the stand-point of choice and alternate possibilities.

Every event, activity, habit or performance ce is accompanied by approval or disapproval. This phenomenon is unique, and presupposes an order that in some sense must be above natural order. Human organisms seem to possess a sensitivity which stimulate them to accord with the requirements of value in all the phases of their life. This requirement is a selected and controlled pattern of activity in face of a particular problematic situation.

Recurrence and repetition of pattern, persistence of particular organization, and abiding by some determinate rules of action define the culture of a people. It seems to be above nature in the sense that it does not form part of the natural growth, and natural causal explanation is out of place in dealing with its manifestation.

But, Bidney calls it a culturalistic fallacy, and denounces it as super-organic theory meaning thereby a theory of culture which does not admit the reduction of Culture to the structural givenness of the biopsychic organism, and does not seek its origin in its propensities. "Ultimately Culture is not intelligible by itself, for the simple reason that culture is a correlative phenomenon, always involving some reference to nature, including man and his geographical environment. One may distinguish at least four variables in the cultural process, namely, human nature, society, geography, and social experience, Any cultural explanation is an attempt to indicate the limiting conditions of a given cultural phenomenon or pattern by reference to the interrelations of these factors".[16] Although Bidney tries to mark out a distinction between deduction and explanation, yet it cannot save `cultural phenomena' from reduction to 'naturalistic' standpoint, which again transforms Anthropology into a naturalistic synthetic Science.

Bidney says that his position has influenced Kroeber and has led to the modifications of his view. This claim is abundantly confirmed in the 'Introduction', Kroeber has written to the Encyclopedic Inventory, 'Anthropology today': "It is evident that anthropology  —  however specific it may often be in dealing with data — aims at being ultimately a co-ordinating science, somewhat as a legitimate holding corporation co-ordinates constituent companies". This was the dream of Comte, Spencer and Ward about Sociology; and now it is that of Kroeber. The latter undoubtedly assigns to the notion of Culture the role of the ultimate synthetic principle as he says "there is one principle that anthropology already has in hand to serve towards a larger synthesis of understanding: the concept of culture." But, like Bidney, White, Lowie, and the Social Anthropologist, he reduces it to the naturalistic perspective of happenings: "This is the idea of culture — of human civilizations, whether rudimentary or advanced — as  something entirely a part of nature, wholly an evolutionary development within nature, and therefore to be investigated by the methods of fundamental natural science, but an unprecedented, and richly ramifying development of nature"[17].

This position is quite hazardous. The content of anthropology is a complex event composed of the fundamental data investigated by different sciences, by virtue of which again it becomes a mere natural synthesis.

X

Uniqueness and logical Autonomy of anthropology as the study of culture solely depends on the logical fact whether the cultural system is unique and irreducible or not. If it is reducible to the Nature, there remains no business for anthropology; it becomes a leisure time hobby to construct a synthesis like that of Scientific cosmology on the basis of informations yielded by other sciences. If this status is what it yearns for, it has no place among the basic natural sciences, hence cannot use the methods of those science.

This struggle for a subject matter has not come to an end. It is open. But, one thing is clear; existence of anthropology is compromised with the essence of Culture, which constitutes its objective foundation.

XI

Although, Anthropology internalizes the category of Culture as the objective field of its activity, yet the unfortunate failure to observe the distinction between Nature and Culture epitomises the massive confusion which shakes this discipline to its very foundation.

Tylor grouped together "knowledge, belief, art, law, moral customs and all other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society" in the idea of Culture, and Malinowski also emphasized that it 'comprises inherited artifacts, goods, technical processes, ideas, habits and values". These words are suggestive: they refer to the 'wholeness' and 'totality' that belongs to this phenomenon and also to its generality. Culture is not a random mass inheritance but a compact entity. It is related in some intrinsic manner to the variety of its contents as unity in multiplicity.

Malinowski used it as the central ordering principle in the mushroom of his ethnographical data. His observational procedure was regulated by the study of facts in the background of the whole Culture. It was his main thesis that every aspect of activity, every complex of traits can be intelligently grasped only in relation to its function in the totality of culture, wherefrom is obtained its significance and rationality. But, there is no distinction between 'cultural structure' and 'Social structure' in Malinowski's model of explanation. They are one, and denote, in their unity, an orderly growth of responses that satisfy biological urges of the human organism. Accordingly, Society is product of bio-psychic structure; and culture is structural configuration of society, a web of persistent, inherited action patterns.

Identification of Society and Culture is conspicuous with Sorokin also, who conceals the vageness of differentiation between society and culture by putting into use a compound term "Socio-Cultural" to denote concretely found human societies and their ways of existence. "The totality of the immaterial meanings-values-norms, not objectified as yet through the material vehicles but known to humanity; the totality of already objectified meanings-values-norms with all their vehicles; finally, the totality of mindful individuals and groups — past and present; these inseparable totalities," remarks Sorokin, "make up the total Social Cultural world, superimposed on mankind's physical and biological worlds"[18]. Since the 'Social and Cultural' seem to denote the same objects, their alternate use is made feasible by the Compound term. Anthropologists like Malinowski and Clifford-Brown by using `Social structure' and 'Culture' as integrative models have also employed them as denotatively equivalents. It is, in my opinion, a scientifically permissible procedure in an area of study, where the connotative contradistinctions have not been yet fully grasped. Sorokin brings to focus the quality of the 'Cultural' as follows: "In contradistinction to the inorganic phenomena that have only one physicochemical component, and to organic phenomena that have two components — physical and vital (life) — the Cultural or super-organic phenomena have the `immaterial' component of meaning (or meaningful value or norm) super-imposed upon the physical and/or vital components. Its presence radically changes the very nature of the inorganic or organic phenomena upon which it is super-imposed."[19] This definition though points out the perspective in which the cultural realities may be found, yet it dangerously edges towards the unhappy identification of the Cultural with the Social. Sorokin, explicitly recognises only two levels of infra-cultural order of existence (i) inorganic phenomena and (2) organic phenomena — physical and vital, and therefrom directly goes to the Cultural phenomena itself as a 'meaningful' paraphernalia raised upon them. This means that social relations are outrightly cultural in their connotation. It means not less than a logical failure to distinguish between the Social and Cultural, reinforced by indiscriminate use of the term `cultural data' for 'social' and other 'human' data.

Znaniecke is also not different. He employs only two broader categories: (1) natural system and (2) Cultural system; 'humanistic coefficient' functioning as the criterion of discrimination between them. "The difference concerns the part which human experience and activity", says Znaniecke play in the real world...Natural systems are objectively given to the scientist as if they existed absolutely independent of the experience and activity of men...very different appear such indubitably cultural systems as those dealt with by students of language, literature, art, religion, science, economics, industrial technique and social organization. Generally speaking, every cultural system is found by the investigator to exist for certain conscious and active historical subjects, i.e. within the sphere of experience and activity of some particular people, individuals and collectivities, living in a certain part of the human world during a certain historical period"[20] Connotative identification between cultural data and any data given in the human world is thus made complete. Child-mother, leader-follower, and other inter-human relations whether one calls them Social or Cultural, it causes no difference in their shades of meaning, according to these thinkers. This mutual substitution of the Cultural and the Social as a linguistic device, would have been accepted but for the storm of confusion in its vagaries, between 'fact' and 'value'. "All actions writing a letter,... a house, building a railroad, fighting a war, are dynamic systems of values organized by an activity... the whole existence of a cultural System as a system of values is essentially founded on those series of actions by means of which the system is being actively constructed" These Considerations presuppose a distinction between `fact' and 'value'.

When it is said that human personalities "exist as value, which active subjects experience and modify" and that "a group is composed fundamentally of individual members, each of whom is a social value for all the rest, the object of the collective assistance and control of the group as a whole and all of whom co-operate in supporting the group as their common value", I feel that the problem of fact is confounded with the problem of value. The idea of identity between a human content and a value intention confuses the whole range of factual dimension with that of the normative. This is why there is vagueness of distinction between the Cultural and the Social phenomena, we confront right from Weber to Sorokin and Znaniecke.

XI

It is quite evident that every normative judgement presupposes an existential proposition: "X has value" involves the givenness of 'X'; even in the most distorted form 'X is value'. Consequently, a question in its own right about the composition, essence, and structure of 'X is justifiable. Apart from its status as subject of a normative judgement it is what it is. Logical priority of existential nature of a thing over its normative determination clearly demonstrates that there is a distinctive problem about the structure of things and that of the structure of the systems produced as they were, when they are in interactions. Consequently, primary and secondary relations, social distance, hierarchy in a collective, isolation, co-operation, individualization, introversion, division of labour, compulsion, mass, group, crowd etc. are entities in their own right prior to the judgements of their value that apply to them. If society is a "meaning-Component" super-imposed on the homosapiens, even then it does not outrightly entail the 'non-material norm-value' component. The latter is another superimposition, and in the idea of culture, reference is made to this component rather than to the social component. A concrete human association or group is, undoubtedly, a sociocultural phenomenon: yet the primary distinction between the social as implying existential reference, and cultural as entailing normative reference is not obliterated. It may be approached from factual standpoint as a sociological object, and may also be approached from normative point of view as a cultural object. The directions of investigations are different.

Culture is a superimposition of value dimension on the process of becoming. It introduces a new order of meaning in the world of facts. There are always two magnitudes of entities (1) in relation to becoming and (2) in relation to value. Even the world of external nature is not worth-free in the context of Culture in which the physical objects are reproduced as parts of the spiritual world. The spiritual and human world, a value world in the order of Culture, is, on the contrary, empty of values, when apprehended in the context of becoming: Love, hate, war, and accord all are value-less affairs in their pure existential causal nexus. Only when they are reproduced in the order of values they occupy a position in the configuration of Culture.

Karl Mannheim's exposition of different modes of givenness[21] with their respective cores of meaning is worth-mentioning here: "If we look at a natural object, we shall see at the first glance that which characterizes it… It is taken as nothing but itself and is fully cognisable without being transcended…Cultural product on the other hand, will not be understood in its proper and truemeaning if we attend merely to that stratum of meaning which it conveys when we look at it as it is 'itself — its objective meaning; we have also to take it as having an expressive and documentary meanings are strata laid down upon the stratum of objective meaning." Now, every cultural product or manifestation was such an objective meaning. "In science this objective meaning is a theoretical proposition, and in our sociological example, it has at least a considerable theoretical component. In the Plastic arts…the objective meaning is itself a purely visual content…" "Objective meaning, that is, meaning to be grasped by objective interpretation, is rooted in the structural laws of the object itself; certain elements and phases of sensible reality here become necessary stage in the progressive realization of meaning"[22]. "On this objective structurel (meaning) of an event, that is, on its pure 'naturalness' is raised the second and third layers of meaning that articulates it into a cultural object." "Now, however, it must be added that expressive meaning too is always embedded in this stratum of objective meaning — a form within form as it were."[23] Mannheim very tersely itomizes here the apriori givenness of the 'factuality'. 'objectivity' and its structural law before it is posited in the higher order of cultural consideration. 'Assistance' and devotion, sacrifice and friendship are all objective configurations of Social events emerging out of the dynamics of the real at the human stage of existence. They require objective vision, and epistemic hold of their constitutive laws i.e. the principles of their becoming should be grasped as we do grasp for example, the colourless nature, its thermal systems and gravitational fields. Cultural contextualization existing in its own right develops upon this stratum of grasp and when the natural things pass through it, they are transformed into contents of cultural experience.

XII

To an experiencing subject, Cultural Phenomena looks like an external cobweb of arrangements for the contents of Social interaction. It seems to be a gigantic scaffolding which enfolds and sustains the massive structure of the social system.

If you perceive social life, as a stream of events, a flow of interpersonal acts, then Culture as a whole would appear to you as a chain of highways, which regulates the traffic between individuals in the social space. The stream of life must pass through it. The 'must' is an imperative, which is attached with every valve and turn of the Cultural system. It must devour the Spontaneity of human spirit, harness the savagery latent in every individual, and civilize his behaviour.

Seen in relative isolation, empty of the contents of inter-personal life, it is but an ethereal being, a mere skeleton, an abstract outline, a thin sketch. But out of necessity, it seems, that social process has to follow it; human behaviour receives the shape it gives, and collective expressions exhibit the patterns, it imposes on them.

This phenomenon is amenable to only one logic; the logic of the forms and their reflections, Plato handed down to the posterities.

The Platonists were certainly wrong for their attempt to understand the logic of becoming with the tools of the Platonic System of concepts. The Hegelian and the life-philosophers rightly condemn them. But an outright dismissal of Platonism is also patently wrong. In one realm of meanings, i.e. in the domain of culture at least, the Platonic Philosophy acquires relevance and due application.

Perception of the world as a phenomenon of reflections of the eternal verities is a value-perception, a recognition of the world as a cultural phenomenon, in which the immutable forms shine here and shine there.

The events are discrete; they are waves of the universal flux. As the forms are impressed upon them or as they display the form-Qualities in their composition, they do not remain mere juxtaposition of forces, congeries of energies, and vectors of the field dynamics. They become `signs', Logic Social of the Philosophy of Self(1-11)mirrors,' media' and 'carriers' of meanings, eternal meanings, aesthetic, moral, utilitarian etc. Plato's problem is not the horse 'become' in the laws of genetics, but the 'model Horse', the horse which determines the value of every existing hcrse in the scale of perfection and imperfection. Therefore, Plato needs not return to observation to get information about the contents, physiology and growth of the horses. When he perceives a particular horse, it is merely to notice the documentation it has received of the 'Model Horse'. Plato, however, was wrong to conceive it of as the only end of knowledge. Cognitive intent has several ends; Platonism is a response to only one end of the cognitive inquiry. It is interested in the 'documentation', anything possesses as it comes to existence. The 'particulars', besides being existing, have a role in the universe; they are bearers of forms, carriers of meaning, media of norms; they are the stuff, through which some 'eternal things' are expressed and signified. It is to this aspect of the Realm of Existence that Platonic Logic is addressed. Accordingly, the particulars, the material things, the facts of the world are phenomena of Significations. They are significant. What they signify, in Platonic terminology, are Universals. The world, we encounter in experience, according to this mode of consciousness, is a documentation of the eternal and unchanging world of the Universals.

Universals, themselves, are 'determinate' modes of expressions of the Archeform — the form of the "Good", the light of all the Lights.[24] The world of forms is a reflecting system of the Supreme Universal in profused diversity and formulates multiplicity of expressions converging in the unity of the expressed. This is a spectacular model, a perfect built, and a complete scheme of that order of universe which operates on the sign-significatum logic.

The sign-significatum context of experience does not pierce, indeed, through the crust of facts and does not penetrate into their compositive factors; it simply touches them and marks its seal upon their tissues, adds a new dimension to them, crowns them with a new meaning, classifies them according to the rules of signification and puts them to the place to which they are fit in accordance with their sign-function in relation to the significata. This scheme does not possess a logic of factual investigation; the universals do not belong to becoming, and it is useless therefore to find their place in the sphere of becoming. I conclude, therefore, that the whole tradition of British Empiricism and the Neo-positivistic movements, all engaged in the problem of becoming, are not correct in their denunciation of Platonism for reification. In their denunciation, they are supported by the life-philosophers blaming Platonism for escapism. It could not however dawn upon them that the direction of their problems is different from that of Plato; They are concerned with facts and their composition; Platonism with fact and their significance. Rehabilitation of Platonism as scheme of this different order of reality at once convinces us of the Realism of 'Forms. Universals are real; they belong to a context not subject to the surges and rules of becoming. They are incessantly beaming forth and are reflected in those facts, capable of receiving them. They preserve their ineffable identity in their reflections, by virtue of which the facts that mirror them gain degrees of similarity, and form a community of reflection, expression or radiation.

Now, to understand the structure of the world of Universals, let us envision that the 'Arche Form' stands in the relation of reflection to the lower 'forms', which reciprocate it, by the relation of mirroring. 'Archeform' has one to one correspondence with its reflections that is, with the lower forms, which in their own way display different modes of its expression. These modes are but copies of the First Form — the Model of the models. Every lower stratum is a limitation; it is a restricted copy of the Ultimate Form, a determinate expression: All the lower strata of forms are different limits but referring to the same Primeval Form, the Original Norm, the Ground Universal. The lowest stratum of the forms is the same identity with the most narrow and definite limits; it is the world of ideas; and it is this layer of 'expressiveness' which is adequately detailed to encompass even the minutest data-configuration of the incessantly variegated world of becoming. Receiving the formal application. the world of becoming is revolutionized, it becomes significant; in 'idealization', it signifies the eternal 'ideas'. The ideas are ever repeating, recurring reflections of the higher forms in the world of facts which continuously mirrors them and is made intelligible as an inexhaustible fund of documentation of the 'Normal World'. Beneath its significant countenance, the world is an oceanic vibration of the structural dynamics, formative forces, synthetic processes changing compositions of events intelligible in the procedures of sciences like physics and psychology, chemistry and sociology formulating each in its own field the laws of vectors and interactions.

Thus, the rich world of ours is member of two different contexts, with two different problems and necessitating two different modes of characterization: (1) The logic of facts and (2) the logic of significance.

XII

Central complex of Platonic Realism is embodied in the notion of `Pattern': it represents the 'universal' everything has to imitate; the general 'Form' every figure has to assume, premier 'Shape' from which none is spared.

The Arche Form, copied in every form, by its impression and seal on the flux of reality raises everything from bare existence to meaningful existence and is called pattern of the things. The Archeform is a self- contained Meaning. It exists in itself and bestows meanings on anything which signifies it. It is not a tool to some end, because it exists for itself; nor is it an end to some means, for it exists by itself; nor does it need a justification as it constitutes its own justification and for all sign-systems it is the 'law of sufficient reason'. Acts, affairs, conditions and contents by following it as a model, by reminding of its image in their realization and by possessing one to one correspondence with its sein become meaningful, rational and significant. Urge for the ideal, unfolded in the self-consciousness of the self, is an ever renewed struggle for imitation of the 'Arche form'. This cultivation of the Supreme form, Meaning of the meanings, reason of all rationality is what is meant by the life of Culture.

Culture is the whole of life, but it lies in the Pattern that pervades everything of the human world. Functioning as the universal predication of all things of the human environment, it refers to their original meaning and ultimate justification. Historians and philosophers of Culture observe that "there is a law or the uniformity which operates everywhere that human culture is given."[25] The criterion of the cultural data is posited in the Principle of Uniformity in the multiplicity of facts. This uniformity inducted out represents their high Pattern of existence, you may say, it is their habit that, "the term habit", says Spengler, "is used of a plant to signify the special way proper to itself in which it manifests itself, i.e. the character, course and duration of its appearance in the light world where we can see it. By its habit each kind is distinguished in respect of each part and each phase of its existence from all example of its species. We may apply this useful notion of habit in our physiogonomic of the grand organisms[26] and speak of the habit of the Indian, Egyptian and classical culture, history or spirituality. Some vague inkling of it has always for that matter underlain the notion of style and we shall not be forcing but merely clearing and deepening that word if we speak of the religious, intellectual, political or social style of a Culture.[27] Apart from the Naturalism in the analogy between Culture and biological (natural event) growth that goes with Spengler, this point made by him leads to one of the most valuable clarifications, and points out that the inquiry into the Cultural phenomena is oriented towards the discovery of the 'form' or style and ways the things have in the flux of events. Kroeber speaks of the 'fundamental patterns characteristic[28] of a culture continuously preserved in the changing social system. Consequently, the field of culture does not imply a reference to the contents of reality but to the forms of reality. In this search Platonism is already implied. Hence the Superiority of the Spenglarian term 'style'.

Charles G. Shaw comments " the Spenglarian idea of style is so unusual and so illuminating that it may receive the stress of another paragraph. 'Style' says Spengler 'is not what the shallow Semper, the worthy contemporary of Darwin and Materialism, supposed it to be, the product of material, technique and purpose. It is the very opposite of this, something inaccessible to art reason, a revelation of the metaphysical order, mysterious 'must' a destiny".[29] It is a destiny and a must, because in the unrepetitive it is repetitive; in the perishable, it is abiding, in the new it is the old; in the unprecedented it is the precedence; in the unique emergence it is familiar profile; and in the novel accumulation, it is recurrent crystallization. Its incessant cultivation in the stream of becoming constitutes the permanent life of culture right now in the ephemeral context of Nature. Corresponding to every natural event — and note that from physical to phychic, social and spiritual all events are natural — there is an immediately applicable particular 'pattern', but it signifies the Universal Pattern or General Style, and the term Culture denotes the entire class of these patterns. They are counterpart of the sensuous ideas of the Platonic system, most rudimentary and opaque Expressions of the Ultimate Form. The natural processes by adopting them are formulated as the Cultural system.

XIII

World of nature in its immediate flow is a living process of passing forms. Little facts and their aggregates spring from its forward drive; many forms are made and undone in its thrust' into the future. This is the natural origin of forms; poor Samper, biologist Darwin and materialist Marx are not altogether wrong in their perception of the forms as outcome of natural forces governed by the laws of composition. Bat, these very 'forms' are sign-bearing. Consequently, the logic of analysis, the one that breaks every Gestalt to its causal components, is suspended. New logic comes into force, the logic of Culture. This logic picks up similarities and fits them into similarities of higher levels till all events are fitted into the ultimate 'similarity'. The same old inductive logic of Aristotle is the logic of Cultural consciousness not the modern logic of scientific analysis[30] which studies structures. From the particular, the Aristotlean logic moves to the general. It does not see the structure of things but the form (of the form) of things. Never made to grasp the constitution of events, it attends to their forms. The events signify the form, in the course of their becoming.

Two distinct laws: the laws of structure and the laws of culture define the bipolarization of the Universe. The `World forms' under the laws of structure are one set of entities and under the laws of Culture, another.

`Style' designates the ultimate 'similarity' which operates universally in the whsle course of the events. Consequently, it is Central Category of Organization under the second set of laws.

`Principle of Uniformity', cornerstone of the inductive logic, has nothing to do with the constitution of events. It cannot grasp the structural processes in their becoming. It is a Cultural principle: and criterion of selection of the Cultural data.

The Logic of analysis, of experimentation is the technique of structural analysis. It is this logic, we use in Science, whose main object is not to discover uniformities, but to discover the inner composition of the events, entities, and things of the world. Its basic concepts are therefore 'energy', 'interaction', 'collision', equillibria and 'tension', etc.

The logic of ascription of a predicate to a subject, the movement of consciousness in Aristotlean Methodology as an activity posits a content into a form. It is thus fundamentally an activity akin to Cultural Reason. The most ingenious plan of the nature of its formulation as it maybe called is propounded in the Critique of Pure Reason, which was claimed by its illustrious author to be a general philosophy of what we call science. This masterpiece, however, simply traces out the modes of Cultural thinking. It is this thinking or Process of intellection which in all essential is a synthesizing activity, and produces uniformity of the experience, which in its process is regenerated into the unity of an all-comprehensive formal system, and discloses, ultimately, one law, one order and one universal predication.

Many philosophers of culture are prone to denote this Universal by the word 'Idea'. This word, however, cannot be taken in its subjective meanings i.e., equivalent to borne in mind or held in mind. It is unconditionally an objective presentation before consciousness; and every cultural product is apprehended through its mediation. Its immediate grasp in the entities given in the empirical field of consciousness may be known as Induction in the Aristotlean sense of the term; and its, immediate application on the objectivity as formulation in the Kantian sense.

The formulated objective experience witnesses its being as such and constitutes its sign-system. Cultural system comprises of the sign-system that exhibits the 'Idea' not only in the totality but also in each of its partial presentation. All the presentations before their formulation in sign-system are natural events; and with their formulation their naturalness is not divulged but subsumed in a new determination. Their structural laws are not modified but are conserved to bear the insignia. Compositional determinations are integrated with the 'reflective' or formulational determinations. The basic distinction, we have maintained, between the laws of structure and the laws of Culture remains untampered with; and it is one of the most primitive distinction which should be consciously maintained by every investigator who takes upon himself to explore the field of culture.

XIV

Anthropology as the science of Culture operates in a unique order of existence which is sharply distinguished from Nature. It discovers cultural laws rather than natural laws. Its epistemological procedure is inductive, and ultimately it is a descriptive science. Sociology, on the other hand, is a Natural Science: its method is that of the natural science; it discovers the laws of composition. It studies the dynamics of Society in the pure category of transaction and field force, vectors and equillibria.

These two modes of inquiry: One Cultural and the Other Natural are integral elements of Social inquiry, founded on the philosophy of self.

The social experience by itself is unable to suggest the articulation it receives on the basis of the idea of Nature or that of Culture. Pure Form of Sociation, therefore, is free, in its own presentativeness, from being perceived as a Natural phenomenon or as a Cultural Reality. When the cognitive Intention gives a push to it on Natural mode of Reality, it becomes a Sociological Perception, but when the Intention moves it on the basis of the Cultural mode of Reality, it becomes an Anthropological Perception. Both of these Perceptions unfold different kinds of Logic, and therefore Sociological Experience is differentiated from the Cultural Experience.

Notes and References