htthey were. They also felt that people at the high end ofthe line(whites) had one time been where these othercultures are and feel this sort of a psychic unitytowards them. Boas was the first anthropologist to do field work. Hebelieved it was essential to live with certain cultures toget the real feel of what they were like. He believed that empirical observation is the only way to create anunderstanding. He did not want data from someone elsebecause it was of no use to him if he did not record it.Boas rejection of data that was not collected in the fieldis well-documented and presents a nature that was veryspecific in its analysis of the subject. His determinationto go out into the field and collect the data for theproject ushered in a new respectability to the field in thathe was not merely regurgitating data that had been collectedfor another study but rather he was analyzing a specific setof information that was pertinent to the study at hand. Heintroduced the concept of empirical observation. Thisinitial use of fieldwork set Boas ahead of the rest of theanthropologists. He was not content to take old data andmake it suit his theories. Rather, he embraced thescientific method and collected data and then reworked histhesis to fit the information dictated by the data setfound. Boas lived what he preached, and this can be seen inhis numerous trips to live among the natives of the land. Heput in stints in the Arctic, with the Kwakitul of thePacific Northwest. Boas also felt that learning a language was asignificant part of understanding a culture, something thatwas a new concept. Along these lines, Boas recognized theimportance of reaching into the past to create and preservethe present, again setting himself ahead of the rest of hiscontemporaries. The idea of cultural whole is that every culture was acomplete system. He felt that anthropologists should notrank cultures. Instead, Boas stated that societies could notbe compared, ...
