Article ID: CBB902634281

Race Before Darwin: Variation, Adaptation and the Natural History of Man in Post-Enlightenment Edinburgh, 1790–1835 (2020)

unapi

This paper draws on material from the dissertation books of the University of Edinburgh's student societies and surviving lecture notes from the university's professors to shed new light on the debates on human variation, heredity and the origin of races between 1790 and 1835. That Edinburgh was the most important centre of medical education in the English-speaking world in this period makes this a particularly significant context. By around 1800 the fixed natural order of the eighteenth century was giving way to a more fluid conception of species and varieties. The dissolution of the ‘Great Chain of Being’ made interpretations of races as adaptive responses to local climates plausible. The evidence presented shows that human variation, inheritance and adaptation were being widely discussed in Edinburgh in the student circles around Charles Darwin when he was a medical student in Edinburgh in the 1820s. It is therefore no surprise to find these same themes recurring in similar form in the evolutionary speculations in his notebooks on the transmutation of species written in the late 1830s during the gestation of his theory of evolution.

...More
Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB902634281/

Similar Citations

Article Hoquet, Thierry; (2014)
Laws of Variation: Darwin's Failed Newtonian Program? (/isis/citation/CBB001500028/)

Book Troumpeta, Sevaste; (2013)
Physical Anthropology, Race and Eugenics in Greece (1880s--1970s) (/isis/citation/CBB001213992/)

Article Aviles-Galan, Miguel Angel; (2010)
Measuring Skulls: Race and Science in Vicente Riva Palacio's México a través de los Siglos (/isis/citation/CBB001030951/)

Article Richard McMahon; (2020)
Resurecting raciology? Genetic ethnology and pre-1945 anthropological race classification (/isis/citation/CBB086533805/)

Article Bruce Buchan; Linda Andersson Burnett; (2019)
Knowing Savagery: Australia and the Anatomy of Race (/isis/citation/CBB782278086/)

Article Sánchez Arteaga, Juan Manuel; (2009)
Las ciencias y las razas en Brasil hacia 1900 (/isis/citation/CBB001020970/)

Book Allen, David Elliston; (2001)
Naturalists and Society: The Culture of Natural History in Britain, 1700-1900 (/isis/citation/CBB000100994/)

Book Ruse, Michael; Travis, Joseph; (2009)
Evolution: The First Four Billion Years (/isis/citation/CBB001232307/)

Book Regal, Brian; (2002)
Henry Fairfield Osborn: Race and the Search for the Origins of Man (/isis/citation/CBB000201525/)

Book Blanchard, Pascal; (2008)
Human Zoos: Science and Spectacle in the Age of Colonial Empires (/isis/citation/CBB001033417/)

Book Blanckaert, Claude; (2013)
La Vénus hottentote: Entre Barnum et Muséum (/isis/citation/CBB001550803/)

Chapter Sivasundaram, Sujit; (2010)
Race, Empire, and Biology before Darwinism (/isis/citation/CBB001020059/)

Authors & Contributors
Sánchez Arteaga, Juan Manuel
Wendy McGlashan
Raphael Bezerra da Silva Uchôa
Buchan, Bruce
Burnett, Linda Andersson
Jenkins, Bill
Concepts
Science and race
Physical anthropology
Natural history
Evolution
Race
Biology
Time Periods
19th century
20th century
18th century
20th century, early
Enlightenment
21st century
Places
Edinburgh
Great Britain
Scotland
United States
Australia
Africa
Institutions
University of Edinburgh
University of St. Andrews
University of Glasgow
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment