Alfred Kroeber, a pre-eminent anthropologist of his day, spent decades on a research project aimed at determining if identifiable laws lie behind the rhythms and patterns of cultural growth and decay: whether systematic relations could be established between artistic fashions, economic booms and busts, periods of intellectual creativity and conservatism, and the expansion and collapse of empires. It was an intriguing question but, after many years, his ultimate conclusion was: no, there were no such laws. In his Configurations of Cultural Growth (1944) Kroeber examined the relation of the
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