Alexander Aleksandrovich Goldenweiser

“ This circumstance, together with the fact that ethnology has often been called upon by other sciences, such as history, sociology, law, ethics, to give a categorical answer to the problems of ultimate origins, is responsible for the over-crowding of anthropological books and journals with fantastic speculations which are at best of interest as material for the ethnologist rather than as contributions to ethnological science. The critical student is therefore doubly concerned about a careful methodology of historic reconstruction in ethnology. ”

“ On the other hand, the Study in Methods is symptomatic of the new spirit of ethnologic science, which, having gathered in vast stores of descriptive data, begins to take stock of its resources, and sets about the task of interpretation and reconstruction with a method progressively more critical and precise, and under the guidance of a rapidly maturing body of theoretic doctrine. ”

“ Therefore, adds the author, it is of the greatest importance to ascertain the paths of diffusion of culture in North America, a task hardly begun (pp. 35–36) .
Passing to the linguistic discussion. Dr. Sapir cautions that linguistics can be drawn upon for historical reconstruction in culture only to the extent to which language reflects culture (pp. 51–52) . ”