Race before Darwin

Variation, adaptation and the natural history of man in post-Enlightenment Edinburgh, 1790–1835

Dados Bibliográficos

ID8395138
AutoresBill Jenkins (0000-0002-0625-2685, University of St Andrews, autor correspondente)
Ano2020
Volume53
Fascículo3
Páginas333-350
Data de publicação2020-09-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoThe British Journal for the History of Science (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0007-0874 • E-ISSN: 1474-001X
EditoraCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0007087420000217
PMID32594914
OpenAlexW3037665575
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas5
Referências citadas25

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

Adaptation (eye · Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Biology · Charles darwin · Context (archaeology · Darwin (ADL · Darwinism · Enlightenment · Epistemology · Genealogy · Inheritance (genetic algorithm · Natural (archaeology · Natural selection · Period (music · Population · Race (biology · Sociology · Surprise · Variation (astronomy · Demography · Gender Studies · Genetics · Historical Economic and Social Studies · History · History of Science and Natural History · Philosophy