One of Boas's main interests and most passionate arguments was that of individual variation. As Stefan Bargheer writes, "the notion of individual variability in the work of Lowie […started] in the 1910s […]. Lowie's argument was initially directed against race scholars […] who argued that the Nordic race displayed a higher range of variation than other races and could thus be assumed to produce a particularly high number of exceptional individuals, which ensured the superiority of the culture produced by this race." Instead he argued that there really were no differences in the range of variation between races. 