450 THE AMERICANJOURNALOF SOCIOLOGY
many American family sociologists, that the
contemporary urban middle-class family is a
viable institution functionally adapted to a
changing industrial society. The fifth essay is
a thoughtful and statistically sophisticated look
at the difficulties in assessing age at marriage.
We learn that, while the data are inadequate,
the age at first marriage probably increased
from Colonial times to about 1890 and has
probably decreased since then. In fact, how-
ever, "we know very little about the age at mar-
riage in the United States" and are unlikely to
learn more until the methods of data collection
and compilation by the Census Bureau are im-
proved.
I found his last paper, an exposition of Par-
sons) concept of personality, to be the most in-
teresting. While he finds much of value in Par-
sons' synthesis, he criticizes it as being too
much concerned with intra-organismic events
and too little with the social-environmental
field. Moreover, he suggests that the theory is
deficient in operational definitions and predic-
tive power. While this is probably true, it should
be pointed out that Parsons is trying to relate
personality structure to social structure within
a consistent conceptual framework and is not
attempting to make clinical predictions about
individual personalities.
These papers are uneven in literary style and
sociological substance. They are often ponder-
ous and pedestrian. (The text, by the way, con-
tains several glaring typographical errors.) At
his best, however, Greenwood writes clearly
and gives us a useful perspective based upon a
fusion of European and American academic
traditions. It is to be hoped that he will follow
this collection of disparate essays with a more
sustained exploration of a single area.
JEROME HIMELHOCH
Brandeis University
The Biosocial Nature of Man. By ASHLEY
MONTAGU. New York: Grove Press, 1956.
Pp. 123. $1.00.
In the Preface the author states: "In this lit-
tle book I have attempted to deal with some of
the questions which must be asked if one is to
gain some understanding of the nature of hu-
man nature." In the Conclusion, the author
states: "What we need to understand as stu-
dents of man is that the biosocial nature of man
is such that he may be truly described as the
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most unique of all living creatures, by virtue of
his possession-in so highly developed a degree
-of the capacity for learning. Indeed, the spe-
cies character which should be part of the def-
inition of Homo sapiens is educability." Be-
tween Preface and Conclusion, the author in-
cludes negative arguments against looking at
man as a purely biological animal. He begins by
reviewing briefly from the historical point of
view some of the early philosophies about the
nature of man but soon becomes deeply en-
grossed in the task of proving Darwin and
Freud wrong. This, in turn, leads to a consid-
eration of etiological factors in the production
of criminality, which consideration serves fur-
ther to prove the author's thesis, namely, a re-
pudiation of reductionistic philosophies that
man is "nothing but" biological evolution and
hereditary constitution.
The author is trying to disprove the static
view of man, and does so expertly and com-
pletely. To him, human nature expresses the
interaction of three systems: genetic endow-
ment, uterine environment, and cultural envi-
ronment. He apparently sees each of them as
equally important, and he damns all who exalt
one above the others or who neglect any of the
three.
Many today would question the influence of
the uterine environment in determining human
nature, and many would emphasize the dynamic
aspects of man's cultural environment. How-
ever, each person is entitled to his own views,
and it can be said to this author's credit that at
least he has thought deeply about these things.
The book makes enjoyable and interesting
reading. It is somewhat philosophical in na-
ture, but, for the most part, describes the au-
thor's personal views.
ROBERT R. MEZER
Boston, Massachusetts
The Child's Conception of Space. By JEAN PI-
AGETand BARBELINHELDER.Translated by
F. J. LANGDONand J. L. LUNZER.New York:
Humanities Press, Inc., 1956. Pp. xii+490.
$8.00.
Most American sociologists are familiar with
Piaget's early studies of the development of
language and thought, judgment and reasoning,
representation of the world, conceptions of
physical causality, and moral judgment in the
 BOOK REVIEWS
child. Since the above work, however, Piaget
and his collaborators have turned out some
fourteen additional books, exploring the con-
ceptions of reality or being, of number, time,
movement, speed, and, in the present volume,
conceptual or representative (as opposed to
perceptual) space.
Here, they seek to demonstrate that the earli-
est mode of conceiving space is topological
rather than Euclidean: the child first distin-
guishes and represents objects by means of such
topological relations as proximity, separation,
order, and inclosure rather than by the manner
in which linearity, angularity, and the like con-
tribute to conceptualized form or shape. Only
later, as he becomes able to take the viewpoints
of others, can he deal accurately with the repre-
sentation (and construction) of simple projec-
tive lines and perspectives, for such "projec-
tive relationships" presume the "inter-co-ordi-
nation of objects, separated in space, as opposed
to the internal analysis of isolated objects by
means of topological relationships." Both Eu-
cidean and projective space stem development-
ally, as well as logically, from topological space,
Euclidean apparently being ontogenetically the
most advanced. (The more general perceptual
reality is treated in The Constructionof Reality
in -the Child, while Euclidean space is reserved
for fuller treatment in La Geometrie spontanee
de l'enfant.)
It is curious that Piaget pays little attention
to the role of the cultural content of social life
in the development of intelligence, for his pet
antagonist is the sort of psychologist who claims
that the world "is" Euclidean and that all we do
is perceive its true Eucidean character. On the
contrary, Piaget insists, perception, sensation,
and, indeed, the very world must be built up or
constructed by the ongoing co-ordination of ac-
tions centered on portions of external reality.
But if it is selective action that constructs the
representation of space, then the development
of that representationmay vary from culture to
culture insofar as culture implies variable, se-
lective action. Intensive and sophisticated repli-
cation is badly needed to explain the role of cul-
ture in the development and form of intelli-
gence.
But this criticism is intended to qualify the
admirable achievement of Piaget. He has given
psychology a theory of cognition (including the
development of cognitive processes) that is un-
matched in detail and sophistication by anyone
in the United States. For the sociologist, his
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451
work may be a break-throughto a more empiri-
cal sociology of knowledge than exists at pres-
ent. As to theory, he presents a "genetic" epis-
temology that is a necessary complement to a
"sociocultural" epistemology. On the level of
research, his writings are larded with a variety
of ingenious experimental situations that might
well be used to test and refine empirically some
of the important analyses of "world-view" or
"mentality" advanced by such writers as Durk-
heim, Whorf, Weber, Mauss, Mannheim, and
Redfield. Indeed, solely this methodological ac-
complishment of rendering into concrete ac-
tions or operations such notions as that of the
straight line and of temporal simultaneity
makes Piaget enlightening reading for any so-
cial scientist.
ELIOTFREIDSON
City College of New York
Cultural Pluralism and the American Idea: An
Essay in Social Philosophy. By HORACE M.
KALLEN. Philadelphia: University of Penn-
sylvania Press, 1956. Pp. 208. $5.00.
This volume is the first in a series which the
Albert M. Greenfield Center for Human Rela-
tions at the University of Pennsylvania pro-
poses to issue as its "Studies in Human Rela-
tions." It contains three essays of Horace M.
Kallen on "Cultural Pluralism and the Ameri-
can Idea," pertinent comments by eight dis-
cussants, and a reprise by Kallen, in which he
comments on the commentators. Among the
latter are jurists, philosophers, educators, or-
ganizers, and one sociologist (Stanley H. Chap-
man). The volume is written in distinguished
English and beautifully printed, but there is no
index.
The work ought to be challenging fare for so-
ciologists. The author, a professor of philoso-
phy at the New School of Social Research in
New York, is known as the vigorous protag-
onist of cultural pluralism, which he presents
here as the American Idea, formulated by the
Founding Fathers, symbolized in the great seal
of the United States, and epitomized in the
motto e pluribus unum; the latter he explains
as pointed toward an orchestrated union of di-
versities and thus fundamentally opposed to the
mechanized unity, or uniformity, of totalitarian
regimes. He would not deny that nativism,
know-nothingism, daughterism, klanism, whit-
ism, and all the various philosophies of Ameri-