ABSTRACT
The brevity of the preceding remarks can be remedied to some extent by dwelling somewhat longer on anthropology, the "synoptic" social science in that, being chiefly concerned with "elementary" societies, it necessarily studies psycho-social processes in their connection with linguistic, economic, and legal structures. This more detailed discussion of structural anthropology is further justified by the fact that Levi-Strauss, its most distinguished representative, is the very incarnation of the structuralist faith in the permanence of human nature and the unity of reason. His structural models-neither functional, nor genetic, nor historical, but deductive-are in some manner paradigmatic; they show what could be achieved in the social sciences by employing structuralist methods. Furthermore, we cannot help thinking that our own constructivist theory of cognitive structure (see Sections 12 and 13) is intimately connected with LeviStrauss' doctrine of the primacy of structure in social life.
