Now that the basis for modern anthropology was being developed, the goal of scientific understanding of different cultures gained momentum. However, "[T]he West still took the Other as its object while declining to put itself in the reverse position." (Pg, 29). .
Finally, Mazlish points out a few points of irony in this era of discovery. First, while European scientist were attempting to integrate these 'discovered' other peoples and examine the New World through the Western lens scientists had pre-established norms by which to evaluate and categorize behaviors within new groups of people. There for, all observations and statistical references were evaluated by these European standards. In addition, all classification of information about peoples and the objects and their rituals and beliefs were subject to a "process of acculturation," (Pg. 31) That is, all that these 'Others' are, all that they practice, all that they created, was compared to and evaluated by a pre-established Euro-Centric standard and framework:.
"His questioning of the natives, the interview technique so basic to anthropology in the field-will not be trustworthy, for example, for the informant's recital of a moral rule may not coincide with actual behavior. The ethnographer must observe what is done, and if he is to understand its meaning, he must have a knowledge of the native's language and of the meaning context in which the act is performed." (Pg. 14).
The second precondition according to Mazlish that served in the emergence of the Modern Human Sciences in the West was Seventeenth Century Science and the Enlightenment. Mazlish reminds us that this period experienced a scientific revolution and essentially taught mankind to think scientifically. He reminds us that much of scientific thought at this time was still, "entangled with magic, mysticism, and religious impulsions.