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Are the Scientific Problems Too Hard?

Underlying the resistance of many anthropologists to the amplification and application of cultural knowledge are worries about pseudoscience. This chapter reviews the scientific difficulties in studying culture and development. Concepts are fuzzy and contested. Measures are inexact and controversial. The chapter provides new analyses of some of the latest data on various measures of development (including a new construct measuring life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness) and various cultural variables. The relationships are sometimes surprisingly strong. But they are only suggestive, as full causal models remain an impossible dream. Nonetheless, thanks to analogies from soil science, psychology, and medicine, the chapter concludes with a less grand but perhaps more useful way to apply cultural knowledge.