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Article ID: CBB001201815

Taxonomies of Feeling: The Epistemology of Sentimentalism in Late-Nineteenth-Century Racial and Sexual Science (2012)

Schuller, Kyla C. (Author)

American Quarterly
Volume: 64
Pages: 277--299

DOI: 10.1353/aq.2012.0023

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Science and race Science and gender Emotions; passions Evolution Epistemology Species concept (biology) Sex Sex differences Biology Paleontology Darwinism Social Darwinism 19th century United States Cope, Edward Drinker

Despite scholarly assumptions that the scientific is opposed to the sentimental, sentimentalism shaped racial and sexual science. I argue that the once-prominent American School of Evolution translated the sensationist epistemology, in which all knowledge derives from the senses, into an explanation of species and race formation. In this view, species originated in sense-based experience and civilization originated in sentiment, granting individuals and especially the civilized control over their own evolution. As sensibility and sentiment denoted a susceptibility to both progress and degeneration, I show how these scientists' concept of sex differentiation attempted to work out some of the contradictions of the sentimental body. Overall, the essay suggests how the discourse of feeling shaped the modern logic of biological difference.

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