Abstract
IT is remarkable, but none the less true, as Mr. Casson points out, that in the order of the development of the sciences man comes last to the most fascinating study of all-the study of himself. It is further notable that the study of man, affording so many avenues of approach, has so frequently, but no doubt inevitably, advanced by the investigation of what may be regarded as side issues. This appears here in the author's references to early developments in ancient and classical Greece, where, for example, the collection of ethnographical and geographical data was an outcome of the needs of navigation and commerce; and if history as conceived in the theory of Herodotus demanded a basis of ethnography, Thucydides turned no less to a line of investigation which was in effect archaeological research.
The Discovery of Man
The Story of the Inquiry into Human Origins. By Stanley Casson. Pp. 340 + 16 plates. (London: Hamish Hamilton, Ltd., 1939.) 12s. 6d. net.
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The Discovery of Man. Nature 145, 809 (1940). https://doi.org/10.1038/145809a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/145809a0