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Show 133 a consequence, the illiterates, seeing that those who read and write derive no benefit from it, are not interested in becoming literate. Leon Portilla, Miguel. "Dispersion e Integracion en el Conocimiento Del Hombre," America Indigena, XVII No. 2 (April, 1957), pp. 141- 161. English Summary: The author of this book begins by presenting the problem of the dispersion of man's knowledge; attributing it principally to the unilateral character of many investigations carried out from the point of view of a particular social science. This, which now constitutes a serious problem on a purely academic plane, becomes a great deal more serious if there is taken into account the present urgency to act scientifically in favor of the social betterment of numerous human groups. As an example, the author cites the case of England in relations with her colonies, whose evolution and productivity were in her hands; of the United States having to face the problem of acculturation of its immigrants and of its Indian and colored groups; of Latin America, and especially Mexico, where right after the Revolution, the cultural heterogeneity, due above all to the backward condition and poverty of millions of Indians, became conscious. In looking for a standard of integration of the various aspects of man and society, there is the opinion of Ruth Benedict and Robert Redfield, who have brought forth the possibility of incorporating the methods of the social sciences with those of the humanities to achieve the desired integration. These authors state that by using only methods of the social sciences, based on analysis, categories and causal laws, only unilateral traits of the human being and of society are presented. Also, these methods appear inapplicable to those human aspects as fundamental as the creative capacity for moral values, of thought symbols, of norms of conduct, of motivations, etc., since they go beyond the frame of quantitative analysis and the causal laws. The humanistic methods on their side have taken as their objective the integral understanding of man, by preference, until now in the classic cultures, and concentrating on those aspects of the human mentality and symbolism least studied by the social sciences. Applying then this humanist method to the study of any human group and of any culture, describing above all the integral man, gifted with imagination, free will, reason and emotion, as creator and recipient, the key can be discovered to integrate the various aspects of the various cultures created by him. Following that, there is demonstrated in some detail the practical form of incorporating the methods of the humanities with those of the social sciences. |