Editing Cultural relativism (section)

===As a heuristic tool===
Another method was [[ethnology]]: to compare and contrast as wide a range of cultures as possible, in a systematic and even-handed manner.  In the late nineteenth century, this study occurred primarily through the display of material artifacts in museums. Curators typically assumed that similar causes produce similar effects; therefore, in order to understand the causes of human action, they grouped similar artifacts together—regardless of provenance. Their aim was to classify artifacts, like biological organisms, according to families, genera, and species. Thus organized museum displays would illustrate the evolution of civilization from its crudest to its most refined forms.

In an article in the journal ''[[Science (journal)|Science]]'', Boas argued that this approach to cultural evolution ignored one of [[Charles Darwin]]'s main contributions to evolutionary theory:

{{quote|It is only since the development of the evolutional theory that it became clear that the object of study is the individual, not abstractions from the individual under observation. We have to study each ethnological specimen individually in its history and in its medium.... By regarding a single implement outside of its surroundings, outside of other inventions of the people to whom it belongs, and outside of other phenomena affecting that people and its productions, we cannot understand its meanings.... Our objection...is, that classification is not explanation.<ref name=boas74>Boas, Franz 1974 [1887] "The Principles of Ethnological Classification", in ''A Franz Boas reader'' ed. by George W. Stocking Jr. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. {{ISBN|0-226-06243-0}}. page 62,62</ref>|author=|title=|source=}}

Boas argued that although similar causes produce similar effects, different causes may also produce similar effects.<ref>Boas, Franz 1887 "Museums of Ethnology and their Classification", in Science 9: 587-589.</ref> Consequently, similar artifacts found in distinct and distant places may be the products of distinct causes. Against the popular method of drawing analogies in order to reach generalizations, Boas argued in favor of an inductive method. Based on his critique of contemporary museum displays, Boas concluded:

{{quote|It is my opinion that the main object of ethnological collections should be the dissemination of the fact that civilization is not something absolute, but that it is relative, and that our ideas and conceptions are true only so far as our civilization goes.<ref name=boas74/>}}

Boas's student [[Alfred Kroeber]] described the rise of the relativist perspective thus:<ref>[[Alfred Kroeber|Kroeber, Alfred]]. 1948. "Anthropology." New York: [[Harcourt Brace]]. p. 11.</ref>

{{quote|Now while some of the interest in (so called solial culture science) anthropology in its earlier stages was in the exotic and the out-of-the-way, yet even this antiquarian motivation ultimately contributed to a broader result.  Anthropologists became aware of the diversity of culture.  They began to see the tremendous range of its variations.  From that, they commenced to envisage it as a totality, as no historian of one period or of a single people was likely to do, nor any analyst of his own type of civilization alone.  They became aware of culture as a "universe", or vast field in which we of today and our own civilization occupy only one place of many.  The result was a widening of a fundamental point of view, a departure from unconscious ethnocentricity toward relativity.  This shift from naive self-centeredness in one's own time and spot to a broader view based on objective comparison is somewhat like the change from the original geocentric assumption of astronomy to the Copernican interpretation of the solar system and the subsequent still greater widening to a universe of galaxies.}}

This conception of culture, and principle of cultural relativism, were for Kroeber and his colleagues the fundamental contribution of anthropology, and what distinguished anthropology from similar disciplines such as [[sociology]] and [[psychology]].

[[Ruth Benedict]], another of Boas's students, also argued that an appreciation of the importance of culture and the problem of ethnocentrism demands that the scientist adopt cultural relativism as a method. Her 1934 book, ''[[Patterns Of Culture|Patterns of Culture]]'', did much to popularize the term in the United States. In it, she explained that:

{{quote|The study of custom can be profitable only after certain preliminary propositions have been violently opposed. In the first place any scientific study requires that there be no preferential weighting of one or another items in the series it selects for its consideration. In all the less controversial fields like the study of cacti or termites or the nature of nebulae, the necessary method of study is to group the relevant material and to take note of all possible variant forms and conditions. In this way we have learned all that we know of the laws of astronomy, or of the habits of the social insects, let us say. It is only in the study of man himself that the major social sciences have substituted the study of one local variation, that of Western civilization.<ref>Ruth Benedict 1959 [1934] ''Patterns of Culture'' Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, page 3</ref>}}

Benedict was adamant that she was not romanticizing so-called primitive societies; she was emphasizing that any understanding of the totality of humanity must be based on as wide and varied a sample of individual cultures as possible. Moreover, it is only by appreciating a culture that is profoundly different from our own, that we can realize the extent to which our own beliefs and activities are culture-bound, rather than natural or universal. In this context, cultural relativism is a [[heuristic]] device of fundamental importance because it calls attention to the importance of variation in any sample that is used to derive generalizations about humanity.