SOURCE: "Some Central Elements in the Legacy," in American Anthropologist, Vol. 61, No. 5, 1959, pp. 146-55.

In the following essay, Spier provides an overview ofBoas's contributions to the field of anthropology.

Boas left no body of dogma as a legacy. What he established, as a foundation to modern anthropology, was a series of guiding principles for action. These were expressed in concrete contributions, with little phrasing of theoretical points in extended form. Hence our survey of central elements here must stay close to the specific as he presented it.

The life of Boas coincided with the establishment of anthropology as a discipline of definite scope and method. He, more than any other individual, can be credited with determining the nature of its field and giving it the scientific approaches of objective empiricism, carefully controlled analysis, firmness of aims, and scrupulous self-discipline in defining the axioms of one's thoughts. For all...