Model children—the painter and his model—a model of a foundry—a miniature model of an aeroplane—Bohr-Rutherford's model of the atom. If one seeks the common element of these various objects and concepts, it would appear to be a comparison between two things displaying some common characteristics, one of which, at least, is the result of a creative effort on the part of man. One of these objects is called a model. But it can be the man-made one or the other which will be, for example, a given thing, either natural or artificial. A similar ambiguity exists in French with the word hôte; it is the notion of hospitality which prevails rather than the identification of one of the parties. In the case in question the relation is that of a form or structure which in both parties corresponds in some aspects, if not in all, to the supplementary criterion of human and voluntary origin of one of them. It also often happens that the thing called model in the relationship is single, whereas the other is multiple and varied both in its homologous characteristics and the additional ones it may possess. In the particular case of models used in science, the models themselves are a result of the creative effort of man.

Psychotherapy and psychiatry have long been regarded as proper to the domain of medicine, both by their practitioners and by society at large. According to a statement issued by the American Psychiatric Association in 1958, “Psychotherapy is a form of medical treatment and does not form the basis of a separate profession.” Noyes and Kolb define psychiatry as “that branch of medicine which deals with the genesis, dynamics, manifestations and treatment of such disordered and undesirable functionings of the personality as disturb either the subjective life of the individual or his relations with other persons or with society.” Implicit in such definitions is the belief that the approach used by physicians in treating and investigating physical illnesses can be used by psychologists and psychiatrists in treating and investigating mental disturbances. Like many other psychiatrists and psychologists, we find this approach open to question.

By a model I understand some familiar kind of object the idea of which we extend by an analogy or metaphor in order to assist our understanding of other things. When we say, “All the world's a stage,” we are using the familiar antics and attitudes of the theatre as a model for thinking about our woes and joys and our activities.

Sometimes a complex model is used by a thinker, by a group, or by a whole age as a guiding pattern suggesting ways of thinking in many areas. One model may even determine an inclusive view about the world from which derive emotional attitudes as well as ruling concepts and ways of thinking for our knowledge of the world. It is often said that the mechanism of a clock served in this way as a ruling model for much thought in the 17th and 18th centuries. Despite their novelty, clockworks were then becoming well known, and they were peculiarly fascinating. Reflection on them made very vivid such notions as regular motion, interchangeable parts, precise mechanical connection, influence by push and pull, and design for specific function.

We still cannot speak of a Bantu philosophy today—or, more generally, of a Negro-African philosophy—without referring first of all to a pioneer work: La philosophie Bantou, by R. P. Tempels, which in 1948 created for the first time an orthodoxy in this hitherto unexplored, or nearly unexplored, field. The fact that this orthodoxy has become accepted would certainly not be enough to justify a heresy. But there may, however, be good reasons to reject it.

In its time R. P. Tempels' work was well received, on the whole with sympathy by the Europeans whom it endeavored to reach, and with unreserved enthusiasm by the intellectuals of Central and West Africa, for whom it opened a way back to their native roots. Quite apart at the moment from any question of philosophy, the author interpreted something essentially and inherently African.

History records innumerable assaults by the barbarian nomads of the steppes and deserts on the realms of civilization. In some cases, the invaders overturned an organized state, as the Hyksos did Egypt, the Ephthalites northern India, and the Kin northern China. In others, they were thrown back, as the Huns were from the Roman Empire and the Avars from Byzantium and Frankland. Some shed their barbarism and acquired the arts of civilization, like the Magyars and the Ottoman Turks, others remained illiterate pastoralists to the end, like the Scythians and the Cumans. Two created world empires as a result of conquests the scope and magnitude of which still grip the imagination. These were the Arabs of the seventh century and the Mongols of the thirteenth, whose spectacular achievements pose problems concerning the interrelationship of nomadic and sedentary societies and of the nature of the “drives” which impel pastoral peoples to burst out of their homelands not simply to raid and plunder but to establish political domination over their civilized neighbors. The Arab and Mongol conquests also raise the question why the former cleared the ground for the erection of a distinctive new world culture and the latter did not.

The multiplication of documentary sources (books or objects) from which the various disciplines glean their data has made the machine an indispensable tool of scholarship today.

The horizons of research are broadening continually. The traditional sciences have widened the field of their investigations. Linguistic studies, for example, are no longer limited to a few languages, but encompass all dialects which have ever been spoken or are spoken today throughout the world. Archaeology is armed with methods of prospecting undreamed of yesterday, and uses the airplane and aerial photography to locate sites. A submarine branch of archaeology, exploring the beds of the seas, has sprung up alongside of land-based archaeology. New sciences have come into being relatively recently, like demography, or even very recently, like experimental psychology. All of these sciences owe something to humanistic studies, not only the applied sciences and industry but even the pure sciences such as mathematics, methodology, heuristics, for scholars are men, integrated into groups, and their intellectual activity falls into the domain of psycho-sociology.