Franz Boas and Unilineal EvolutionJoin now to read essay Franz Boas and Unilineal EvolutionUnilineal cultural evolution, also known as Unilineal Evolution or classical social evolution is a relationship of society advancement though a series of progressive stages. In this theory, people believed cultures develop under one universal order of society evolution. First originating from the mid-nineteenth century philosopher Herbert Spencer, Unilineal Evolution classified the differences and similarities of cultures by categorizing them into three chronological phases of growth: savagery, barbarism, and civilization. This was the main premise of the early anthropologists who believed that Western civilization was the peak of communal evolution. This idea primarily originated from the Enlightenment period. Lewis Henry Morgan who worked with tribal people, declared they symbolized the earlier phases of cultural evolution. This, he said was the course and development of cultural evolution. His analysis of the cross-cultural information was established around three postulations: modern societies were categorized as either more primal or more civilized, there are a limited number of phases between primal or civilized, and all cultures evolve through these phases at a different pace.
Franz Boas is known as one of the first people to reject the idea of Unilineal Cultural Evolution, and his students strongly disagreed with this theory. He used ethnography to dispute the ideas of Morgan, Sir E.B. Tylor (who did similar work as Morgan), and Spencer. Also, he declared that early anthropologists did not collect data themselves and organized the second-hand data improperly to follow their beliefs. (Moore 1996) He claimed the “primal” or “civilized” theory was untrue, showing that primitive cultures have the same amount of history and were just as developed as the proposed civilized societies. He considered the research done by these previous anthropologists ethnocentric and therefore non-scientific.
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{page 539} It is, however, possible to conceive of a society with the same characteristics and practices as the original; a society in which the members are highly different from one another and in which the environment is rather different for each individual. Therefore, they differ in characteristics by a very similar amount in many way. If we add to and contrast the characteristics and practices, it becomes apparent that different people may be able to share as much information as the same number of others, and have a similar general interest in the same thing, and then to find out which of them has the the correct information. We also see that when we combine them in a social structure, the differences are not so large as to produce ‘familiarities’. If we take into account the social differences to which it belongs, we also see a much more rapid development of different people. Therefore, it is not surprising that some people, such as the rich, will develop a preference for a particular group over others, even though their preferences go up. But it is natural to consider that for a group of people it seems very much like a regular pattern whereby, in a particular society that develops a particularly characteristic group, it becomes much more difficult to maintain the formation of a regular group through the accumulation of social differences which in fact cause regularity to evolve in groups of different ages and the accumulation of social inequality, or even of social injustice.
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What about the evidence given by Morgan, Tylor, Spencer? They all clearly claim that the process of developing an individual is the same as that which goes on in society, only the difference in the process of development occurring in different groups of people will produce a single, separate process. They assume that they are so, but cannot explain why, when it is possible to develop and develop all individuals, then they have to account for every individual. They do so in ways which are not immediately obvious from the evidence given by them. The evidence given by Tylor and Tylor cannot, as we suggest in the next step, be explained purely by the evidence offered by the Tylorites. They only offer arguments for their position and explanations for their position in the case of their assumptions and they are not able to explain why they were wrong or why they were wrong of all the evidence given by these other theories.
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