I

In the article by Edward Tylor, ``The Science of Culture'', even just by the use of the title, implied that civilization as it stands now in cultures across the globe is something that could be measured objectively in the name of science. The principles of civilization were based on the necessity of causality; each uniform action had a uniform cause.[4, p. 27] Here Tylor was specifically drawing a connection between the predictability of nature and predictability of people, hence turning sociology, anthropology into a ``real'' science. Although there was uniform action with uniform cause, he stated that the varying types of cultures in existence throughout the world could be explained then by historical evolution.

Completing Tylor's connection between the natural world and the social world he underscored some of natural science's irrefutable tenets: the unity of nature, the fixity of laws, the contiguity of cause and effect, and general order of the cosmos (that nothing happens without sufficient reason.)[4] In the study of humans, however, metaphysics and religion have put too much behind arguments against regular laws. The basic concept behind the denial of basic laws for humans, argues Tylor, is persistence and necessity to believe in free will: freedom to act, and to do so at random. Humans acting at random is about as preposterous as a fog settling at random without due cause (I.E.: without the action of warm and cold air mixing.)

In Tylor's study of civilization, he dissected the culture into its constituent details or parts: weapons, textiles, myths and religion, etc. In such a manner, the ethnographers can then act as a naturalist would. He makes an analogous argument to animals in that the availability and use of tools from one culture to the next constitutes different ``species'' of study. So that, for example, the flattening of skulls to the counting by tens would constitute different species to him. He extends the naturalist-animal analogy to encompass the geographical distribution of human artifacts and their transmission from region to region as a naturalist would study an animal's migration pattern.[4, p. 31] Every event has a cause, and the varying types of cultures were produced by the same causes; yet to see how similar things are is proof of the evolution of culture. Tylor explains the similarities through the diffusion of culture. Diffusion of culture throughout countries denotes a consensus on some establish modes of behavior: language, religion, art, law, etc.

Further Tylor argued that culture obviously evolves because inventions and discoveries lead to other inventions and accumulations of knowledge. Those that remain the same, he calls survival artifacts. The survival artifacts are old customs that are unchanged because they are proven solutions to problems. Other cultural artifacts are the result of one of progress, degradation, survival, revival and modification; the active influences of life on society constitute these general characteristics which physically embody themselves as fashion, language etc.

This evolution of culture based on accumulated knowledge is Morgan's basic premise in his article ``Ethnical Periods.'' However, unlike Tylor, Morgan actually collected his data out in the field, arriving at his categorization of culture base on artifacts-the material production of the necessities of survival. He outlined the progress of civilizations into seven basic categories for comparison: subsistence, food production; government, clans to political structures; language, sign language to speech to the written word; the family, genealogy; religion, un-understandable because it deals with emotions and imagination; architecture, from hut to skyscraper; and property, from public to private.

Morgan also explained the origins of government, in so doing noting the difference between nation (kinship government) and state (property based government); while the former consists of a patrilineal unit of organization, the latter is based on the town as the unit of organization. In this case, the town is representative of the concept of real private property, we will return to the implications of this when we discuss its link to Marx. The evidence to back his theory of the development of government mainly comes from the remaining institutions of the native races, the repetitive patterns of organization from sex, through kinship, to territorial, and that the experiences of mankind have all run a similar course due to similar obstacles, and hence substantially similar results because of the same physiological equipment.

Morgan used evidence from the tribes he had studied to categorize and compare the various civilizations. In order to categorize he needed a separate and distinct set of periods that do not overlap. For this he created his three major stages of savagery, barbarism, and civilization, further subdivided into lower, middle and upper. The purpose of the classification was to demonstrate that many different tribes might be at different stages but at the same time; time may be immaterial, but condition is a material fact. Further, it gives direction to the study of specific cultures and tribes which demonstrate the particular period specifically. Morgan explains that the diffusion of the various races of humans caused the evolutionary process to be disrupted. The development or lack of pottery, for example, in the different races throughout the world, apart from being a strong indicator for village life, show that there was a material need for it even long before the technology was discovered. Hence pottery was a technological breakthrough.