The Genius of Kinship: The Phenomenon of Human Kinship and the G ...

Chapter 2

Philosophy, Psychology,
and Physiology

Immanuel Kant, Arthur Schopenhauer,
Franz Gall, and Johann Spurzheim:
Genius and Madness, the Brain and the Mind

As Trautmann writes, L. H. Morgan invented kinship as a coherent object of scientific research (Trautmann, 1987, pp. 3–4). Trautmann wittily juxtaposes two ostensibly conflicting notions: (a) the natural world of kinship, birth, biology, and procreation, and (b) the artificial world of invention, fiction, and technological innovation. The seeds of the irony embedded in the title of L. H. Morgan's most recent biography were planted in the Enlightenment. They revolve around the concept of a genius. The moderns inherited from the ancients the notion of mimesis, which was perceived as the essence of art. The difference lied in the nature of mimesis: invention was thought of as an ability of certain individuals to see new relationships in nature (or in God's handwork), while imitation was the tendency of the rest to copy the works of those selected few. Independent traditions of