ON BEING CRITICAL
Alex D. Krieger
In thinking over a suitable topic for this memorial to Alfred L. Kroeber,
I felt that it would be presumptuous of me to prepare a research article, for
this would imply that, like the other authors in this volume, I had received
$ormal training from him. As a matter of fact, during the three undergraduate
4nd two graduate semesters that I majored in anthropology on the Berkeley cam-
pus in l935-1937, I had only one course from Professor Kroeber--on the Indians
of California--as an undergraduate.
It was under different and rather unique circumstances that I was able
to come into contact with Kroeber's immense learning, experience, and wisdom.
As a senior and during my one graduate year in Berkeley, I worked part-time as
Preparator in the Museum of Anthropology. My first assignment was to complete
Athe cataloging of the Reisner collections from Egypt, a fascinating introduction
to archaeology indeed. After that, Robert Heizer and I cataloged the archaeo-
logical collections he and I and others had excavated in Nevada and central
California on week ends and on summer expeditions Then, in the summer of 1937,
just before I went to the University of Oregon, Kroeber put me to work on the
analysis of all collections made during some thirty-five years in the shell mid-
dens around San Francisco Bay.
Then Kroeber needed to get away briefly from his superhuman work program
in the old Anthropology Building, he would come to the Museum to relax a bit.
But no sooner would he see one of us at work there than he would immediately
become interested in what we were doing. He would look over the artifacts and
skeletal material, ask questions about our field data and ideas of interpreta-
tion, offer comments and insights, and then, in a relaxed, conversational manner
inj-ect aspects of his own philosophy toward basic problems, methods, and atti-
tudes towards colleagues. Those who knew Kroeber will know what I mean by his
instant readiness at all times to help the "fledglings" along, at least as often
as he could find time for it. All told, I probably did not spend more than ten
hours in these conversations with Kroeber during the two years I was employed
in the Museum, yet the net result was of greater value to the shaping of my fu-
ture career, and my thought processes, than all of my university courses put
together.
Besides these conversations in the Museum there were four other occasions
on which I became better acquainted with Kroeber: once when he and Mrs. Kroeber
visited our field camp in the Sacramento Valley in the summer of 1936, two short
visits to their summer home near St. Helena in 1946 and 1950, and in 1947 when
Kroeber came to the University of Texas to give a public lecture and stayed two
or three days to discuss various North American archaeological problems, shortly
to be incorporated in his 1948 edition of Anthropology.
In this account, then, I will set forth some of the principles gained
from these conversations which I remember best. They may reveal something of
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Kroeber's thinking not fully appreciated even by those who knew him well; and
to the present and future generations of anthropologists who have never known
him at all these observations may serve a purpose, just as they did for me. I
cannot, of course, guarantee that the wordings are exact. Neither can I make
a clear separation between what he actually said and some of my own philosophies
which gradually developed from his initial stimulation. But I believe that the
quotations given below convey fairly accurately the intent that he had at the
time as well as the informality of his phrasings--"off the cuff" and without
thought of being quoted.
Kroeber's incredible output and range of interests need no comment: they
are known around the world. To me, the greatest single aspect of his long and
productive life was the possession of a completely open mind. We all like to
talk of open minds and undoubtedly most of us think we have one; but to this
day I can think of no one else in which this ideal was so fully realized in
practice. It took the form of constant seeking of new information, new ideas,
and particularly of welcoming criticism. If criticism was not forthcoming vol-
untarily, he had ways of teasing it out of those whose opinions he wanted--and
these included beginners as well as renowned professionals. He once said, very
emphatically, '"I do not like to have people agree with me. There is no stimula-
tion in that." No matter who you were, all he asked was that you have some rea-
son for your stand. He realized, of course, that his tremendous reputation
caused greater and greater hesitation among others to criticize him, but I feel
confident in saying that he did not like this and that he tried to overcome it
by launching on a friendly discussion of anything that seemed appropriate with
the person in question. Kroeber cared nothing about age or standing in the pro-
fession, only about what went on in the heads of his listeners. Here was a man
who not only welcomed differences of opinion but actively sought them. I think
that under it all he believed that everyone needs criticism for his own ultimate
good.
On one occasion that I remember well, Kroeber stated that "There is too
much talk about truth and scientific method. Actually there are few real truths,
and these are the result of constant testing by different people with different
points of view and living in different ages. There are always fads in thinking
and when these wear off others take their place. There is almost nothing that
does not need to be done over again sooner or later and perhaps many times. As
to 'scientific method,' there are many methods which are equally scientific if
they are sincere and attempt to be objective. Only time and repeated testing
will tell which methods are best; but different methods are suitable for differ-
ent purposes, so we have to know what the objectives are before any method can
be called more 'scientific' than another. On the other hand, there is a scien-
tific attitude, which is not a method but a state of mind, and is not subject
ta changing fads in thinking. The scientific attitude is simply a matter of
never being satisfied, either with one's own methods or with those of others.
In other words, no matter how well we think we are doing, we can always do bet-
ter after we realize the flaws in our past attempts."
And again: "No one can really examine all the evidence on any major
problem; at least not at first hand. This puts us in a nice fix when, as so
often happens, we claim to have reached valid conclusions after having examined
and weighed 'all the evidence.' I don't know any way out of this dilemma except
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to put my trust in those people who seem to know best what they are doing.
Mistakes can be made this way, too; but I am always more impressed by those
WhQ know their own limitations and the limitations of their information than
I am by those who reach too-pat answers. I am usually suspicious of a suppos-
edly revolutionary discovery or interpretation, not because I feel more com-
fortable with the status quo, but because the startling 'new' discovery is
Often not very new at all: It may be made by someone only half educated in
the problem or by someone who is anxious to become famous in a hurry. Here
again we have fads in thinking and it becomes fashionable to jump on the band-
Wagon and go hurrying off in the new direction. As for myself, I would rather
wait and see how the experts react over a period of time."
Once, after I had been at the University of Oregon for a year, Kroeber
asked if I had reached any opinions about a survey of Oregon tribal boundaries
which he had recommended for publication "without having the information to
criticize it."  I had not, but he went on to say that he had often recommended
manuscripts for publication if they seemed substantial. "No matter how much
One person may know of a subject, there is always someone, somewhere, who knows
more. This may not always be true, but it is well to allow for it because
there are scholars who spend their lives collecting information but are too shy
or too lazy to publish much of it. Or perhaps they labor under the mistaken
idea that if they work long enough the report will be above criticism. Some-
times, however, these people who sit forever on their unpublished notes can be
teased into speaking up if they see what they think are mistakes in someone
else's work. So by urging publication of anything that seems essentially rea-
Sonable , I always hope to stir up comments that would not have been forthcoming
Otherwise. The trouble with this policy is that so few people understand its
Purpose, so that instead of getting corrections and additional information, we
Often get unnecessarily bitter attacks.
"I would rather publish as fast as I can feel reasonably sure of my mater-
even at the risk of errors and uncertainties, so that it will be out where
Others can shoot at it. Nothing is worth much in any profession until 'it is
Published. . a 1. Controversies are healthy and necessary; progress is impos-
Sible without them. , . . Even the wildest ideas often serve a purpose by
Pointing out questions that need to be answered."
In the 1930's and 1940's, a considerable amount of classroom time and
Publication space was devoted all over the country to the discussion of "schools"
Of anthropological thought:  "historical anthropology" versus "functionalism";
extreme tIdiffusionism" versus "environmental determinism," and so on. There was
(and perhaps there still is, in some quarters) a good deal of bitterness and
Snobbery over what was the "right" way to approach anthropology. Kroeber, as
One of the world's great anthropologists, was naturally in the midst of many of
these arguments and was often criticized as too much this or too little that.
I heard him remark on this situation only once, when he said "There isn't any
right way or wrong way to advance anthropology: we need them all."
Kroeber's one insistence was independence of thought and action.  "Don't
believe too strongly in what anyone else says or writes," he would say. "Pick
a Problem and work at it to see where it leads. If it doesn't seem to be work-
ing out, try another approach and see where it leads. Work and experiment and
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try to think for yourself. Your professors can help but in the long run it is
up to you to learn how to get the most out of any problem you tackle."
This insistence on experimenting and independence is worth mentioning here
in connection with the problem of the antiquity of man in America, to mention
only one example. In recent years it has become the fashion to open any discus-
sion of this problem with a biting indictment of the hyperconservatism of Holmes
and Hrdlicka, a dogma which supposedly dominated thought so completely for some
forty years that all progress came to a halt. Furthermore, the argument goes,
even the present generations of anthropologists are by and large still captives
of this dogma because they have been taught by those who were more directly in-
fluenced. I have no doubt that the Holmes-Hrdlicka dogma did influence some
anthropologists--and perhaps still does--but I think the situation has been
greatly exaggerated and I shall have more to say about it in another place.
Just now I wish to state that it is preposterous to claim that thought-control
of this kind would have been brought to bear on anthropology students on the
Berkeley campus while Kroeber and his colleagues were teaching there. In some
of his writings, Kroeber does touch briefly on the subject of man's antiquity
in America, but only to emphasize how little was (and is) known about it: not
enough, in fact, for a   real conclusions.  This was just another of the many
problems to which students would be urged to apply themselves with energy and
independence, with critical questioning of previous interpretations. If we look
for causes of extreme conservatism, scholars like Kroeber must be among the
first of all possible causes to be eliminated.
Another of Kroeber's remarks is worth repeating here, ramely: "A general-
ization is not a law." He had said that too many anthropologists seemed to be
deathly afraid of attempting generalizations because whenever they did so, an
authority on some part of the world would be sure to leap forward to denounce
it on the grounds that there were exceptions to it. "This kind of criticism
misses the point," he would say, "because it confuses what may only be a general
tendency in the data with an immutable Jaw of some kind. Exceptions to a gener-
alization are to be expected, but a law, on the other hand, is an ordering of
phenomena which occurs invariably under certain stated conditions and any proved
exception will destroy it. The discovery of underlying laws in any aspect of
nature or culture is one of the basic aims of research everywhere and demands
extreme caution; but anyone can draw generalizations from his studies as he sees
fit."
On the subject of typology in archaeology and physical anthropology, I can
recall only one occasion--lasting less than an hour--on which Kroeber expressed
himself candidly. His comments -struck me so forcibly at the time, however, that
my own typological work has been largely based on them ever since. Heizer and I
had laid out on tables the skulls and jaws, and associated artifacts, from some
fifty burials excavated in a single Sacramento Valley site in 1936. In addition
to analyzing the cultural material, we were ambitious to learn some of the tech-
niques of physical anthropology as well, and had begun making standard measure-
ments on the skulls. Like everyone else, including the physical anthropologists,
we assumed that the way to discover "types" in skeletal material -as painstaking-
ly to make all the possible measurements, tabulate them, calculate means and
standard deviations, etc., and then hope that somehow a series of "types" would
be revealed by these statistics-.
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In the midst of this work, Kroeber made one of his visits to the Museum,
and after watching us in silence for a time, began to pick up the skull-and-
jaw assemblages one by one, holding them at arm's length, and gazing intently
at the faces and profiles, then re-grouping them on the tables. As to our tab-
ulations, he said "Those measurements are not the important thing. They have
to be done, I suppose, but only as art of the description of the material after
you lave determined on groups or types some other way. Types will never emerge
from the measurements and statistics alone. First you should experiment with
groupings that might have some meaning; in other words, group them into skulls
that look as if they belonged to people of similar appearance. Do the faces
look long and narrow, or short and broad? Are the orbits round or oval or
squarish? Are the foreheads high or low? Are the supraorbital ridges, mas-
toids, and other processes rugged or smooth? And so on."
After making groupings that seem to indicate generally similar appearance,
Kroeber stated that we should examine the associated cultural material to see
if there were any corresponding similarities or differences. After that, we
should do the same with some other nearby sites to test the tentative results.
Finally, and only after a lot of experimenting of this kind, we could make mea-
surements to aid in describing to the reader the characteristics of each trial
group. This is not the place to elaborate on Kroeber's recommendations: I
wish only to point out that they emphasized the need for experimenting and
searching for historical significance before "Itypes" of any kind could be ad-
vanced. I followed these recommendations for years afterward with stone and
bone artifacts, pottery, basketry, and so on.
I will end this account with one more of his remarks which may intrigue
others as much as it did me. After the appearance of his Configurations of
Culture Growth (University of California Press, 1944) and the second edition of
AnthropologT(Harcourt, Brace and Coo, 1948), I once naively  asked Kroeber how
it was possible for anyone to get together such an immense amount of material
in the short time he had spent, only about one year on each book when separated
from the many other writings and duties he worked on at the same time. He said:
"I depend pretty much on the Britannica for that sort of thing.?? After a pause
he added:  "The trick is to know when you can depend on the Britannica and when
you have to go beyond it to dig up better information." Enough said!
There were, of course, many other comments on this and that during these
all-too-brief conversations. I have tried to present in a very condensed form
some aspects of Kroeberls philosophy which cannot be found in his voluminous
writings--or at least not as candidly.  Seldom indeed does the world produce
such a combination of learning, insight, tolerance for others' views, modesty,
and eagerness to be of help to all.
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