The Prime-Mover of Cultural Evolution

THE MAIN BURDEN OF THIS ARTICLE has been presented in talks to student clubs during the past two years. The purpose was to argue against the widespread notion that a theory of cultural evolution ecessarily involves a monistic determinism, a "prime-mover" of some sort. The recent publication of Harris' The Rise of Anthropological Theory (1968) has made it timely to present he argument to a wider audience. Harris has reviewed anthropological thought since its beginnings in the Enlightenment a d graded the various theories primarily in terms of their degree of departure from what he considers the source of cultural change, technoeconomic determinism. Many of his criticisms ofother theories are well-taken, and I have borrowed them freely in several instances. (There are several inaccurate accounts and mistaken judgments, oo; but since this is not a review, I shall not refer to them further.) It is convenient tolist the main currents in the history of thought about cultural evolution in terms of competing theories about the determinants of evolution. One cannot, of course, do justice to all of them in a single article, but that is not the point: I think it is important to establish that there is a way of thinking about evolution that permits an openness about the locus of causality. Another way to put it is that most of the prime-mover arguments are each probably somewhat, or sometimes, right. This is not an expression of indeterminism, however, but only a statement that the acceptance of one prime-mover to the exclusion of others inhibits what should be an empirical study of the locus of causality. According to Webster, prime-mover used figuratively means simply "the original or most effective force in any undertaking." It is important to stipulate, however, that for the prime-mover to account for evolutionary change, which of course is variable, the prime-mover must be itself a variable. Hence, it is not synonymous with something "basic" or "important," since such aspects of life and culture might be constants like matter and energy, or physical and psychic needs. It should be understood also that only the prime-movers that are scientifically arguable will be discussed, to the exclusion of theological, mystical, or metaphysical theories. Thus we may agree with Harris to ignore theories like those of