Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Institution Building In Utah, Joseph A. Geddes

Faculty Honor Lectures

The slow growth of civilization and the early meagerness of tested knowledge in any but the most pressing and practical matters undoubtedly conditioned and determined the nature of primitive collective thinking. Large assumptions had to be made about all things. Trial and error methods were slow methods. Only in his late maturity as knowledge multiplied has man found ways of testing the validity of an hypothesis so that assumption-making could become a tool of advancement rather than a controlling mechanism. Superstition, a large component in the culture of even the most advanced peoples, was an inevitable adjunct of progress. As …