アメリカ民族学説における進化主義と反進化主義
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概要
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American ethnology of the latter part of the nineteenth century, like that of England, was permeated, if not dominated, by the theory of evolution. In the 1890s a reaction against evolutionism was initiated by Franz Boas. This movement grew rapidly in the first decades of the twentieth century, and by the 1920s had succeeded in bringing cultural evolutionism to the status of utter disrepute. R. H. Lowie, A. Goldenweiser, E. Sapir, R. Benedict, M. J. Herskovits, and other students of Boas contributed to the anti-evolutionist movement. American disciples of Father Wilhelm Schmidt-S. A. Sieber, S.V.D., F. H. Mueller, A. Muntsch, S. J., et al-also have opposed evolutionism. The Boas group has argued that the occurrence of diffusion negates theories of cultural evolution. They assert that evolutionists claimed that "every people" must pass through a fixed series of stages of development. They then show that, thanks to diffusion, a people may skip a stage. But the evolutionists did not say that every people had to pass through a series of stages of cultural development, but that culture develops through a deterministic series of stages. The anti-evolutionists have confused the cultural history of peoples with the development of culture as a process sui generis. The anti-evolutionists have argued that the concept of stages itself is unsound, that progress is merely a subjective feeling of the observer, not an objective characteristic of the culture process, and that, therefore, cultures cannot be evaluated or arranged in a qualitative series. Objective criteria of progress can, however, be established. It is significant to note, too, that virtually all members of the Boas group do evaluate cultures although they insist that it cannot be done. To the Boasians all evolutionism is "unilinear, " and "unilinear" evolution is unsound. But Tylor and Spencer were not "unilinear" evolutionists. Both unilinear and multilinear interpretations are valid : the former when the culture of mankind is taken as a one ; the latter when the focus is upon cultures in the plural. Goldenweiser took the evolutionists to task for considering gradual evolutionary change only, ignoring sudden, revolutionary change. This, however, is but one of many instances or misrepresentation of evolutionist theory : Morgan not only recognized but even emphasized revolutionary change. The concept of evolution is unquestionably one of the most basic and fruitful concepts in science, in astronomy and physics as well as in biology. It is equally fundamental and important in the science of culture. The reactionary anti-evolutionist movement in ethnology has been part of a general opposition to science that has persisted since Darwin's day. It is significant to note that the only refuge of anti-evolutionism today is ethnology and orthodox theology. Significant, too, is the fact that the clerical anthropologists of the school of Fathers Schmidt and Koppers, side by side with the disciples of Franz Boas, have been and still remain the chief opponents of cultural evolutionism. Sooner or later, however, the theory of evolution will be rehabilitated and restored to ethnology-if progress is to characterize the future as it has the past. There are indications that this restoration may already be under way.
- 日本文化人類学会の論文
- 1951-03-15