Note 1 — Chapter V · THE INTERPRETATION OF ANDAMANESE CUSTOMS AND BELIEFS: CEREMONIAL (continued 3)
Reading edition
The making of such hypothetical reconstructions of the past has been regarded by a number of writers as the principal if not the sole task of ethnology. My own view is that such studies can never be of any great scientific value. Although, within narrow limits, particularly when the method is applied to the facts of language and material culture, it is possible to reach conclusions of some degree of probability, yet by their very nature all such hypotheses are incapable of verification. Moreover, the purpose of scientific studies is to discover general laws, and hypotheses as to events in the past of which we have and can have no certain knowledge will not provide suitable material from which to draw generalisations. ↑