[翻譯]Carl Ortwin Sauer：卡爾‧騷爾

卡爾‧騷爾(Dec. 24,1889-July 18,1975)為美國地理學家。出生於Warrenton, Missouri，1915年於芝加哥大學博士班畢業。1923年起擔任柏克萊加州大學擔任地理學教授至1957年榮譽退職，其間對於校內創設地理學研究所。他著名的一部作品是農業起源與消散(Agricultural Origins and Dispersals)(1952)。1927年卡爾‧騷爾寫了一篇文章"當前文化地理學的脈動(Recent Developments in Cultural Geography)"，提及文化地景如何以"型態堆疊於自然地景"組成。

騷爾在踏入專業領域時，便是一位重度環境決定論者，是地理學的優勢理論。他提倡一種多樣地途徑稱之為"地景型態學"或"文化歷史學"。這涉及歸納人類長時間在地景中產生衝擊的事件。他倚重的人類學者阿佛瑞得‧克魯柏(Alfred Kroeber)的文化理論"超有機(superorganic)"，為騷爾視文化為單一實體的催化劑(causal agent)。騷爾拒絕實證主義，寧可以特殊主義與歷史主義理解世界。政治上來說，騷爾是保守主義，並表達關注於世界上現代資本主義與中央集權政府摧毀文化多樣性與環境健全的狀況。

退休後，騷爾的人文環境地理學學院發展為文化生態學學院。文化生態學保留了騷爾對地景與近代文化人類變異的興趣。但這否定了文化超自然理論，接受了實證主義方法論。

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原文；來源：http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_O._Sauer

Carl Ortwin Sauer (December 24, 1889 – July 18, 1975) was an American geographer. He was born in Warrenton, Missouri and graduated from the University of Chicago with a Ph.D. in 1915. Sauer was a professor of geography at the University of California, Berkeley from 1923 until becoming professor emeritus in 1957 and was instrumental in the early development of the geography graduate school at Berkeley. One of his most well known works was Agricultural Origins and Dispersals (1952). In 1927, Carl Sauer wrote the article "Recent Developments in Cultural Geography," which brought up how cultural landscapes are made up of "the forms superimposed on the physical landscape."

Sauer was a fierce critic of environmental determinism, which was the prevailing theory in geography when he began his career. He proposed instead an approach variously called "landscape morphology" or "cultural history." This approach involved the inductive gathering of facts about the human impact on the landscape over time. He drew heavily on the "superorganic" theory of culture of anthropologist Alfred Kroeber, which saw culture as a causal agent sweeping individuals along with it. Sauer also rejected positivism, preferring particularist and historicist understandings of the world. Politically Sauer was a conservative, and expressed concern about the way that modern capitalism and centralized government were destroying the cultural diversity and environmental health of the world.

After his retirement, Sauer's school of human-environment geography developed into cultural ecology. Cultural ecology retained Sauer's interest in human modification of the landscape and pre-modern cultures. But it rejected the superorganic theory of culture and adopted positivist methodologies.