EVOLUTION IN CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY: A REPLY TO LESLIE WHITE

摘要: EVOLUTION IN CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY: A REPLY TO LESLIE WHITE By ROBERT H. LOWIE White's last three articles in the merican nthropologist 1 require a reply since my opinion they obscure vital issues. Grave matters, he clamors, are at stake. Obscurantists plotting to defame Lewis Morgan and undermine theory of evolution. Professor White should relax. There no underground machinations. Evolution as scientific doctrine-not farrago immature metaphysical notions-is secure. Morgan's place history anthropology will turn out be what deserves, for, Dr. Johnson said, man is ever written down except by himself. These raise important questions. As victim his polemical shafts I like clarify issues involved. premise that am peculiarly fitted enter sympathetically into critic's frame mind, for one time was devoted Ernst Haeckel Morgan. had solved riddles universe me. ESTIMATES OF MORGAN Considering fate many men hands their critics, it does not appear has fared so badly. Americans bestowed on him highest honors during lifetime, eminent European scholars held esteem. Subsequently, happens with most celebrities-Aristotle, Darwin, George Eliot, exa~ple-the pendulum swung opposite di­ rection. The reaction overshot its mark times, when Americanists doubted even Crow findings. Nevertheless, appreciation been frequent ample later periods. Haddon calls greatest sociologist past century ; Rivers hails discoverer classificatory system; Radcliffe-Brown'rates Systems Consanguinity Affinity monu­ ment scholarly, patient research Mitra pictures an anthro­ pological colossus, greater Tylor; Marcel Mauss Paul Radin avowed admirers. 2 What, precisely, expect? An academic muezzin every center learning who shall lead anthropologists daily Rochester-ward obei­ sances genuflections? AND BOASIANS term Boasian misleading. Of great physiologist Johannes MUller one-time disciple said: school sense common dogmas, taught none, only method. This holds Boas. White, 1943, 1944, 1945. 'Haddon, 1934, p. 127. Rivers, 1914, 4 f. Radcliffe-Brown, 1941, 1. Mitra, pp. 109­