Editing Franz Boas (section)

===Physical anthropology===
Boas's work in [[physical anthropology]] brought together his interest in Darwinian evolution with his interest in migration as a cause of change. His most important research in this field was his study of changes in the body from among children of immigrants in New York. Other researchers had already noted differences in height, cranial measurements, and other physical features between Americans and people from different parts of Europe. Many used these differences to argue that there is an innate biological difference between races. Boas's primary interest—in symbolic and material culture and in language—was the study of processes of change; he therefore set out to determine whether bodily forms are also subject to processes of change. Boas studied 17,821 people, divided into seven ethno-national groups. Boas found that average measures of the cranial size of immigrants were significantly different from members of these groups who were born in the United States. Moreover, he discovered that average measures of the cranial size of children born within ten years of their mothers' arrival were significantly different from those of children born more than ten years after their mothers' arrival. Boas did not deny that physical features such as height or cranial size were inherited; he did, however, argue that the environment has an influence on these features, which is expressed through change over time. This work was central to his influential argument that differences between races were not immutable.<ref>{{cite journal|last1 = Allen|first1 = John S.|year = 1989|title = Franz Boas's Physical Anthropology: The Critique of Racial Formalism Revisited|url=https://archive.org/details/sim_current-anthropology_1989-02_30_1/page/79/mode/2up|journal = Current Anthropology|volume = 30|issue = 1| pages = 79–84|doi=10.1086/203716| s2cid = 144974459 }}</ref><ref name="Jackson2005p148">{{Cite book |title=Science for Segregation: Race, Law, and the Case against Brown v. Board of Education |last=Jackson |first= John P. |publisher=[[NYU Press]] |year=2005 |isbn=978-0-8147-4271-6}}
*{{cite web |title=Book Review: Science for Segregation: Race, Law, and the Case Against Brown v. Board of Education |url=http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/lhr/25.2/br_19.html |website=History Cooperative|date=18 October 2020 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |title=Defending the Master Race: Conservation, Eugenics, and the Legacy of Madison Grant |last=Spiro |first=Jonathan P. |publisher=Univ. of Vermont Press |year=2009 |isbn=978-1-58465-715-6}}</ref> Boas observed:

<blockquote>The head form, which has always been one of the most stable and permanent characteristics of human races, undergoes far-reaching changes due to the transfer of European races to American soil. The East European Hebrew, who has a round head, becomes more long-headed; the South Italian, who in Italy has an exceedingly long head, becomes more short-headed; so that both approach a uniform type in this country, so far as the head is concerned.<ref>Abbott, Karen, ''Sin in the Second City'', Random House, 2008, p. 206</ref></blockquote>

These findings were radical at the time and continue to be debated. In 2002, the anthropologists Corey&nbsp;S.&nbsp;Sparks and [[Richard Jantz|Richard&nbsp;L.&nbsp;Jantz]] claimed that differences between children born to the same parents in Europe and America were very small and insignificant and that there was no detectable effect of exposure to the American environment on the cranial index in children. They argued that their results contradicted Boas's original findings and demonstrated that they may no longer be used to support arguments of plasticity in cranial [[morphology (biology)|morphology]].<ref>{{cite journal|last1 = Sparks|first1 = Corey S.|last2 = Jantz|first2 = Richard L.|year = 2002|title = A reassessment of human cranial plasticity: Boas revisited|journal = PNAS|volume = 99|issue = 23| pages = 14636–14639|doi=10.1073/pnas.222389599|pmid=12374854|pmc=137471| bibcode = 2002PNAS...9914636S|doi-access = free }}</ref> However, [[Jonathan M. Marks|Jonathan Marks]]—a well-known physical anthropologist and former president of the General Anthropology section of the [[American Anthropological Association]]—has remarked that this revisionist study of Boas's work "has the ring of desperation to it (if not obfuscation), and has been quickly rebutted by more mainstream biological anthropology".<ref>Marks, Jonathan '' What It Means to Be 98% Chimpanzee: Apes, People, and Their Genes'', University of California Press, 2003 {{ISBN|978-0-520-24064-3}} p. xviii [https://books.google.com/books?id=HUBe0wjowLMC&dq=Jonathan+Marks+ring+of+desperation++Boas&pg=PR18]</ref> In 2003 anthropologists Clarence C. Gravlee, H. Russell Bernard, and William R. Leonard reanalyzed Boas's data and concluded that most of Boas's original findings were correct. Moreover, they applied new statistical, computer-assisted methods to Boas's data and discovered more evidence for cranial plasticity.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://lance.qualquant.net/gravleeetal03a.pdf |title=Archived copy |website=lance.qualquant.net |access-date=17 January 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050325220928/http://lance.qualquant.net/gravleeetal03a.pdf |archive-date=25 March 2005 |url-status=dead}}</ref> In a later publication, Gravlee, Bernard and Leonard reviewed Sparks and Jantz's analysis. They argue that Sparks and Jantz misrepresented Boas's claims and that Sparks's and Jantz's data actually support Boas. For example, they point out that Sparks and Jantz look at changes in cranial size in relation to how long an individual has been in the United States in order to test the influence of the environment. Boas, however, looked at changes in cranial size in relation to how long the mother had been in the United States. They argue that Boas's method is more useful because the prenatal environment is a crucial developmental factor.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.anthro.fsu.edu/people/faculty/CG_pubs/gravlee03b.pdf |title=Archived copy |website=www.anthro.fsu.edu |access-date=17 January 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20040421082034/http://www.anthro.fsu.edu/people/faculty/CG_pubs/gravlee03b.pdf |archive-date=21 April 2004 |url-status=dead}}</ref>

A further publication by Jantz based on Gravlee et al. claims that Boas had [[cherry picking (fallacy)|cherry picked]] two groups of immigrants (Sicilians and Hebrews) which had varied most towards the same mean, and discarded other groups which had varied in the opposite direction. He commented, "Using the recent reanalysis by Gravlee et al. (2003), we can observe in Figure 2 that the maximum difference in the cranial index due to immigration (in Hebrews) is much smaller than the maximum ethnic difference, between Sicilians and Bohemians. It shows that long-headed parents produce long headed offspring and vice versa. To make the argument that children of immigrants converge onto an "American type" required Boas to use the two groups that changed the most."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.understandingrace.org/resources/pdf/myth_reality/jantz.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101130163534/http://understandingrace.org/resources/pdf/myth_reality/jantz.pdf |archive-date=2010-11-30 |url-status=live |title=The Meaning and Consequences of Morphological Variation |author=Richard L. Jantz |website=Understandingrace.org |access-date=2017-03-04}}</ref>

Although some [[sociobiology|sociobiologists]] and [[evolutionary psychology|evolutionary psychologists]] have suggested that Boas was opposed to Darwinian evolution, Boas, in fact, was a committed proponent of Darwinian evolutionary thought. In 1888, he declared that "the development of ethnology is largely due to the general recognition of the principle of biological evolution". Since Boas's times, physical anthropologists have established that the human capacity for culture is a product of human evolution. In fact, Boas's research on changes in body form played an important role in the rise of Darwinian theory.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Massin |first=Benot |title=Volksgeist as method and ethic: Essays on Boasian ethnography and the German anthropological tradition |publisher=Univ of Wisconsin Press. |year=1996 |isbn=978-0-299-14554-5 |editor-last=Stocking |editor-first=G.W. |pages=122 |chapter=From Virchow to Fisher: Physical Anthropology and "Modern Race Theories" in Wilhelmine Germany}}</ref> Boas was trained at a time when biologists had no understanding of genetics; [[Mendelian genetics]] became widely known only after 1900. Prior to that time biologists relied on the measurement of physical traits as empirical data for any theory of evolution. Boas's biometric studies led him to question the use of this method and kind of data. In a speech to anthropologists in Berlin in 1912, Boas argued that at best such statistics could only raise biological questions, and not answer them.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Boas |first=Franz |date=1913 |title=Veränderungen der Körperform der Nachkommen von Einwanderern in Amerika |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/23031137 |journal=Zeitschrift für Ethnologie |volume=45 |issue=1 |pages=1–22 |jstor=23031137 |issn=0044-2666}}</ref> It was in this context that anthropologists began turning to genetics as a basis for any understanding of biological variation.