Science: The Alert Professor

Yale Professor (of geography) Ellsworth Huntington was short (5 ft. 2 in.), with an exceptionally large, bald head. He was so deaf that he could study unconcerned while the University band umpahed on the same floor of Hendrie Hall and the Glee Club bellowed “Bulldog” directly below him. While the 1938 hurricane was shredding the elms and overturning New Haven’s trolley cars, Professor Huntington worked away on a manuscript; he did not realize what was going on until it was all over. The experience buttressed one of his favorite theories: that the human intellect works best in a changeable, stimulating climate. The professor, 71, an authority on practically everything concerning the human species, died last week.

Rape & Non-Fiction. In his younger days, Huntington ranged all over the world—to the Near East, Latin America, Chinese Turkestan—always compounding generalizations to explain why human beings, provoked by weather and geography, behave as they do. He kept an eye open for such relevant material as the relation of rape to the seasons (highest in June); the proportion of non-fiction lent by U.S. public libraries (lowest in the South); the relation of climate to monotheism (it does best in deserts).

After a lifetime of accumulating such data, Huntington wrote a book entitled Mainsprings of Civilization, which is probably the top mark (with the exception of Arnold J. Toynbee’s work) for high, wide & handsome thinking about human affairs. The book began with a declared objective that would drive most cautious scholars scurrying into their catacombs: “To analyze the role of biological inheritance and physical environment in influencing the course of history.”

In this staggering effort Huntington was not wholly successful (no one man could know enough). Many of his theories and observations are hotly contested by equally erudite scholars. But his book has a human aliveness very rare in the social sciences.

Kiths & Climate. Out of the vast, miscellaneous welter of Huntington’s ideas, a few will certainly live. One is the concept of “kiths,” a main feature of his book. Huntington defined a kith as “a group of people relatively homogeneous in language and culture, and freely intermarrying with one another.” He traced the careers of many influential kiths, including the Jews, the Puritan New Englanders, the Mongols, the Hakkas of South China.

Huntington may be best remembered for his theories about the influence of climate on civilization. He argued that as civilization develops, it moves toward colder regions. The earliest civilized people hardly ventured away from the warm lands of Egypt and Mesopotamia; their technique of life could not cope with even a mild winter. The Greeks and Romans knew more about battling winter, and benefited from the mental stimulus of the north Mediterranean climate. After the invention of the chimney and other body warmers, civilization throve best in North Europe and America, where the cold, changeable climate kept minds alert. The next great extension of civilization, speculated Huntington, may be into Russia: the technique of keeping warm has just about caught up with Russia’s extra-stimulating cold.