Abstract
DIFFUSION OR INVENTION IN CULTURE.—In Psyche (Oct. 1926), Dr. Bronislaw Malinowski has a most illuminating article on the life of culture, in which he attempts to show that the contrast insisted upon by some anthropologists between culture by ‘diffusion’ or by ‘invention’ is erroneous. He points out that every modern invention is made and re-made time after time in different places by different men. In the case of ‘wireless,’ though the invention is popularly ascribed to Marconi it can be traced back through Ampere, Faraday, Righi, Braun, Clerk Maxwell, Hertz, Lodge, and other workers. Thus the invention of radio communication can be treated as a single and singular event and ascribed to one man or another only by a misconception: the point of view of the Patent Office cannot rightly be taken up for the science of culture. Every cultural achievement is due to a process of growth in which diffusion and invention have equal shares. Culture is something always at work, which is there for the satisfaction of elementary human needs, which in turn creates new wants and provides means for their fulfilment. The value of so-called savage ‘superstition’ is to be found in the confidence that magical rite gives man in forgetting difficulties and in bridging gaps in his knowledge. Borrowing from others does take place, but whenever one culture borrows from another, it always transforms and readapts the objects and customs borrowed. Diffusion is modified invention, exactly as invention is a partial borrowing.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Research Items. Nature 119, 65–66 (1927). https://doi.org/10.1038/119065a0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/119065a0