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Franz Uri Boas (; ; July 9, 1858 – December 21, 1942)〔Norman F. Boas, 2004, p. 291 (photo of the graveyard marker of Franz and Marie Boas, Dale Cemetery, Ossining, N.Y.)〕 was a German-American〔Boas, Franz. A Franz Boas reader: the shaping of American anthropology, 1883–1911. University of Chicago Press, 1989. p. 308〕 anthropologist and a pioneer of modern anthropology who has been called the "Father of American Anthropology".〔Holloway, M. (1997) ''The Paradoxical Legacy of Franz Boas—father of American anthropology. Natural History.'' November 1997.()〕〔Stocking. George W., Jr. 1960.Franz Boas and the Founding of the American Anthropological Association. AmericanAnthropologist62: 1–17.〕 Studying in Germany, Boas was awarded a doctorate in 1881 in physics while also studying geography. He then participated in a geographical expedition to northern Canada where he became fascinated with the culture and language of the Baffin Island Inuit. He went on to do field work with the indigenous cultures and languages of the Pacific Northwest. In 1887 he emigrated to the United States where he first worked as a museum curator at the Smithsonian, and in 1899 became professor of anthropology at Columbia University where he remained for the rest of his career. Through his students, many of whom went on to found anthropology departments and research programmes inspired by their mentor, Boas profoundly influenced the development of American anthropology. Among his most significant students were Manuel Gamio, A. L. Kroeber, Ruth Benedict, Edward Sapir, Margaret Mead, and Zora Neale Hurston. Boas was one of the most prominent opponents of the then popular ideologies of scientific racism, the idea that race is a biological concept and that human behavior is best understood through the typology of biological characteristics. In a series of groundbreaking studies of skeletal anatomy he showed that cranial shape and size was highly malleable depending on environmental factors such as health and nutrition, in contrast to the claims by racial anthropologists of the day that held head shape to be a stable racial trait. Boas also worked to demonstrate that differences in human behavior are not primarily determined by innate biological dispositions, but are largely the result of cultural differences acquired through social learning. In this way, Boas introduced culture as the primary concept for describing differences in behavior between human groups, and as the central analytical concept of anthropology.〔 Among Boas's main contributions to anthropological thought was his rejection of the then popular evolutionary approaches to the study of culture, which saw all societies progressing through a set of hierarchic technological and cultural stages, with Western-European culture at the summit. Boas argued that culture developed historically through the interactions of groups of people and the diffusion of ideas, and that consequently there was no process towards continuously "higher" cultural forms. This insight led Boas to reject the "stage"-based organization of ethnological museums, instead preferring to order items on display based on the affinity and proximity of the cultural groups in question. Boas also introduced the ideology of cultural relativism which holds that cultures cannot be objectively ranked as higher or lower, or better or more correct, but that all humans see the world through the lens of their own culture, and judge it according to their own culturally acquired norms. For Boas the object of anthropology was to understand the way in which culture conditioned people to understand and interact with the world in different ways, and to do this it was necessary to gain an understanding of the language and cultural practices of the people studied. By uniting the disciplines of archaeology, the study of material culture and history, and physical anthropology, the study of variation in human anatomy, with ethnology, the study of cultural variation of customs, and descriptive linguistics, the study of unwritten indigenous languages, Boas created the four field subdivision of anthropology which became prominent in American anthropology in the 20th century.〔 ==Early life and education== Franz Boas was born in Minden, Westphalia. Although his grandparents were observant Jews, his parents embraced Enlightenment values, including their assimilation into modern German society. Boas's parents were educated, well-to-do, and liberal; they did not like dogma of any kind. Due to this, Boas was granted the independence to think for himself and pursue his own interests. Early in life he displayed a penchant for both nature and natural sciences. Boas vocally opposed anti-Semitism and refused to convert to Christianity, but he did not identify himself as a Jew;〔Glick, L. B. (1982), Types Distinct from Our Own: Franz Boas on Jewish Identity and Assimilation. American Anthropologist, 84: 545–565.〕 indeed, according to his biographer, "He was an 'ethnic' German, preserving and promoting German culture and values in America."〔Douglas Cole 1999 ''Franz Boas: The Early Years, 1858–1906'' p. 280. Washington: Douglas and MacIntyre.〕 In an autobiographical sketch, Boas wrote: :The background of my early thinking was a German home in which the ideals of the revolution of 1848 were a living force. My father, liberal, but not active in public affairs; my mother, idealistic, with a lively interest in public matters; the founder about 1854 of the kindergarten in my home town, devoted to science. My parents had broken through the shackles of dogma. My father had retained an emotional affection for the ceremonial of his parental home, without allowing it to influence his intellectual freedom.〔Boas, Franz. 1938. An Anthropologist's Credo. The Nation 147:201–204. (part 1 ), (part 2 ) (PDF).〕 From kindergarten on, Boas was educated in natural history, a subject he enjoyed.〔Koelsch, 2004, p.1〕 In gymnasium, he was proudest of his research on the geographic distribution of plants. When he started his university studies, Boas first attended Heidelberg University for a semester followed by four terms at Bonn University, studying physics, geography, and mathematics at these schools.〔Lowie, Robert H. 1947. Franz Boas, 1858-1942. ''National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoirs'' 24:303-322. p. 303.〕〔Harris, 1968, p. 253.〕〔Koelsch, 2004, p.1.〕 In 1879, he hoped to transfer to Berlin University to study physics under Hermann von Helmholtz, but ended up transferring to the University of Kiel instead due to family reasons.〔 At Kiel, Boas studied under Theobald Fischer〔Lowie, 1947, p. 303.〕〔Harris, 1968, p. 265.〕〔Bohannan, Paul, and Mark Glazer (eds.). 1988. ''High Points in Anthropology'' (2nd Ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. p. 81〕〔Speth, William W. 1999. ''How It Came to Be: Carl O. Sauer, Franz Boas and the Meanings of Anthropogography''Ellensburg: Ephemera Press. p.128.〕 and received a doctorate in physics in 1881 for his dissertation entitled "Contributions to the Understanding of the Color of Water,"〔Kroeber, A.L. 1943. Franz Boas: The Man. American Anthropological Association, ''Memoirs''. 61:5-26. p. 5.〕〔Bohannan and Glazer, 1988, p. 81〕〔Murray, Stephen O. 1993. ''Theory Groups and the Study of Language in North America: A Social History''. Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. p. 47〕〔Williams, Vernon J., Jr. 1998. Franz Boas Paradox and the African American Intelligentsia. In V.P. Franklin (ed.) ''African Americans and Jews in the Twentieth Century: Studies in Convergence and Conflict''. Columbia: University of Missouri Press. 54-86. p. 57.〕 which examined the absorption, reflection, and the polarization of light in seawater.〔Kroeber, 1943, p. 5.〕〔Williams, 1998, p. 57.〕 Although technically Boas' doctorate degree was in physics, his advisor Fischer, a student of Carl Ritter, was primarily a geographer and thus some biographers view Boas as more of a geographer than a physicist at this stage.〔Harris, 1968, 265〕〔Bohannan and Glaser, 1988, p. 81.〕 The combination of physics and geography also may have been accomplished through a major in physics and a minor in geography.〔 For his part Boas self-identified as a geographer by this time,〔 prompting his sister, Toni, to write in 1883 "After long years of infidelity, my brother was re-conquered by geography, the first love of his boyhood."〔quoted in Koelsch, 2004, p.1.〕 In his dissertation research, Boas' methodology included investigating how different intensities of light created different colors when interacting with different types of water,〔 however he encountered difficulty in being able to objectively perceive slight differences in the color of water and as a result became intrigued by this problem of perception and its influence on quantitative measurements.〔〔Murray, 1993, p. 47.〕 Boas had already been interested in Kantian philosophy since taking a course on aesthetics with Kuno Fischer at Heidelberg. These factors led Boas to consider pursuing research in psychophysics, which explores the relationship between the psychological and the physical, after completing his doctorate, but he had no training in psychology.〔Liss, Julia E. 1995 Patterns of Strangeness: Franz Boas, Modernism, and the Origins of Anthropology. In Prehistories of the Future: The Primitivist Project and the Culture of Modernism. E. Barkan and R. Bush, eds. Pp. 114–130. Stanford. CA: Stanford University Press.〕〔Liss, Julia E. 1996. "German Culture and German Science in the Bildung of Franz Boas". ''In History of Anthropology'', vol. 8. Volksgeist as Method and Ethic. G. W. Stocking Jr., ed. Pp. 155–184. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.〕 Boas did publish six articles on psychophysics during his year of military service (1882-1883), but ultimately he decided to focus on geography, primarily so he could receive sponsorship for his planned Baffin Island expedition.〔Harris, 1968, p. 264.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Franz Boas」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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