A Note on the “Curious” Title of Until Darwin

“Yes, It Should be a Colon and not a Comma”

A Note on the “Curious” Title of Until Darwin

“A Different Account of Difference”

Fara, P. Science & Education (2016) 25: 933. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11191-016-9842-6

B. Ricardo Brown (2010/2016) Until Darwin, Science, Human Variety and the Origins of Race. Routledge, London & New York, ISBN: 978-1-138-66,144-8, 199pp, (paperback)

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11191-016-9842-6

In a well considered and greatly appreciated review, Patricia Fara remarks on  “the curiously titled” Until Darwin. This brought a chuckle as the printed title has always been a source of both humor and annoyance to me. So let me tell a little story behind it.

And let me first state that the original working title for most of the 8 or 9 years of the research and writing was Ecce Homo: The Scientific Classification of Human Variety & The Origins of Race. It was noted that although much of the text was centered on Darwin, his name did not appear in the title and of course this was at the time of the anniversary celebrations were about to get underway. So I took the suggestion to change the title to Until Darwin: Science, Human Variety, and the Origins of Race. Somehow in the copyright application that the publisher (the late and lamented Pickering and Chatto) submitted substituted a “,” for my “:” – which was of course a surprise and I promptly contacted them about the error.

Let me be clear that Pickering and Chatto was a joy to work with in every other way and all of our interactions were quite great, except it seemed that in this one instance, I was told that because of changes in the way librarians in the U.K. were cataloging titles, having a comma was the only way to get the entire title in the title field. Secondly, that Pickering had a new editorial policy against colons in titles(!). I thought this was curious, not least because I had worked as a legal reference librarian for 11 years. I argued that the title now really did not make sense, but my protests feel on deaf ears. I offered to pay to resubmit the paperwork with a new title, but was again told that it was not possible and then I decided not to literally argue over a comma. 

So, this is all water under the bridge, but let me just state that the actual title of Until Darwin is:

Until Darwin: Science, Human Variety and the Origins of Race

The original manuscript of Ecce Homo contained two additional chapters focusing on Classical notions of human difference, especially in Pliny the Elder. These will no doubt appear in a coming work.

Finally, in light of thinking about this, I am going to post the unedited proof of Until Darwin as a series of posts on this blog.

And again, many thanks to Patricia Fara and the other reviewers of Until Darwin. All of your criticisms will find their way into coming works.

“A Different Account of Difference”
Fara, P. Science & Education (2016) 25: 933. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11191-016-9842-6
B. Ricardo Brown (2010/2016) Until Darwin, Science, Human Variety and the Origins of Race. Routledge, London and New York, ISBN: 978-1-138-66,144-8, 199 pp, £34 (paperback)
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11191-016-9842-6

Selected reviews: Isis, Vol. 102, No. 4 (December 2011); British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 45 (1):135-136 (February 2012); Studies in the History and Philosophy Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, Vol. 44, No. 3 (September 2013); Victorian Studies Vol. 57, No. 2 (Winter 2015).

Work-in-Progress: Degeneration, Race, and the Rise of Sociology

Work-in-Progress:  
Degeneration, Race, & the Rise of Sociology

The work of writing the follow-up to Until Darwin has begun. Below is a little bit about the manuscript and more will be posted here over the next few months as another project draws closer to completion . The motivation for this return is that, in hindsight, my approach in Until Darwin perpetuated a certain silence through its focus on the place of Darwin's encounters with slavery in his thinking about nature, natural selection, and the tangled bank of life. Of course, Darwin is a towering figure across many disciplines whose work simply can not be ignored if we want to understand how we got to the place we find ourselves. However, Darwin's long shadow obscures just how difficult it was for even him to bring an end to the monogenic/ploygenic debates that permeated Enlightenment attempts to understand human variety. Most importantly, in Until Darwin it obscured the continuities of polygenism, degeneracy, and race before and after the publication of the Origin, as well as their place in the emerging fields (systems of knowledge) of sociology and biology.

The persistence of the concepts of degeneracy, race, and to a lesser degree polygenism, is a problem confronting the study of Darwin and Darwinism, but is also one found in the pages of any study of degeneracy or racialism. This begs the so far unanswered question: How is it that theories of race and degeneracy predate the Darwinian revolution and move from a relatively minor position within Natural History to a dominant position within the new sciences of life? By investigating this question, we are led to consider how polygenism, race, and degeneracy were reinterpreted after the collapse of Natural History. If these continuities exist, this investigation should reveal how the fields of biology and sociology relied on each other for validation and legitimacy through their deployment of shared scientific ideologies of race and degeneracy. In Until Darwin, one gets the impression that Darwin's Origin of Species was an epistemological break, but it was an error to have left that impression. It is the persistence of these scientific ideologies that raise questions about the extent of the "revolution" initiated by the publication of the Origin. Degeneracy, race, and polygenism were not discarded as out-date scientific ideologies. In the wake of the Origin of Species, race and degeneracy – at times with an undercurrent of polygenic theory – became objects of scientific study, and their use as dynamic social forces in modern life only intensified. Of course, one must admit that Darwinism in its broad meaning produces its own theories of race and degeneracy, but this only supports the assertion that these notions once comfortably housed within Natural History soon found their place with the new sciences of life. These scientific ideologies gave legitimacy and social relevance to biology and sociology. It is almost impossible to imagine biology and sociology as disciplines apart from their relevance to government and to the health of the governed.

Thomas Huxley wrote that Naturalists like himself – for the term “biologist” was only just coming into use – had been too humble to simply and honestly lay their rightful claim to the entire domain of life, and so for mere convenience the study of modern human life had been ceded to sociology. Huxley was quick to point out that with the inevitable advance of knowledge, biology will one day no longer need to be so humble and will inevitably take its place as the organizing science of social and natural life. Until that day, “...one should not be surprised if it occasionally happens that you see a biologist trespassing upon questions of philosophy or politics; or meddling with human education; because, after all, that is part of his kingdom which he has only voluntarily forsaken” (Huxley. 1876 (1902) “Study of Biology” in Scientific Memoirs IV: 252-253). As told by this foremost of the new scientists, confining themselves to one domain of life contributed to the formation a new system of knowledge that his contemporary William Sumner called “the sciences of life in society” within which “....biology and sociology touch. Sociology is a science which deals with one range of phenomena produced by the struggle for existence, while biology deals with another. The forces are the same... the sciences are cognate” (1881:173; from “Sociology” in War and Other Essays: 165-194).

 

The question that we will attempt to examine in this manuscript is a deceptively simple one: how is it that notions of polygenism, degeneracy and race survived the end of Natural History and were so easily incorporated into, and transformed by, the new sciences of life? It should be admitted that this question demands a more complex answer than this single – if any work is really singular – manuscript will provide. We can only point out an avenue of critique that has not been fully accessible until recently. These pages will focus on the place of degeneracy and race in the emerging disciplines of biology and sociology, with special attention being given to their place in the emergence and legitimization of sociology in the United States. We can justify this focus on the United States, if indeed it need be justified, because it is here that the polygenic theory reached its zenith and where slavery made questions of human variety and the replies of race and degeneracy aspects of everyday life and politics. The sciences of life and society have always given a special place to degeneracy and race. Broadly speaking, the goal is to demonstrate that the social was always biological and the biological has always been social, at least since the moment when we began to speak of sociology and biology as the sciences of life.

NGRAM (just for fun)
Biology,Sociology,Biologist,Sociologist,biologist,sociologist,degenerate,degeneration,eugenics: 1800-1939

Sociology of Science & the Origins of Race: Slides from Sessions I & II

 
Sociology of Science & the Origins of Race: 
Slides from Sessions I & II

 
Slides from Sessions I & II [September 4, 2014]
on Classical and Early Scientific Theories of Human Variety

The Sociology of Science and the Origins of Race
We often try to understand race as it confronts us today, either as a source of diversity and multiculturalism or as a social problem.  This is not surprising given the fact that racism is a historical production and so today we still exist amidst its' vast accumulation.  But racism presupposes the existence of Race, of something so essential to us that it is visibly manifested by our bodies, and these manifestations fall into a limited number of scientifically defined types.  Race began as a scientific concept within the discourse of Natural History, but with far reaching connections to nationalism, sexuality, industrialism, and authoritarianism.  To place our contemporary discussion of human variety into a historical context, this class will investigate the history of scientific discourses on race from Blumenbach’s classification of humanity into the five familiar races, to Gobineau’s Essay of the Inequality of Human Races, the Social Darwinists, and Thomas Dugdale’s  The Jukes, a classic study of degeneration in fin de sciel upstate New York.  Along the way, we will examine the debate on the origin of species, whether races represent different species of humans (the monogenesis/polygenesis dispute in Antebellum America), phrenology, intelligence testing, criminal anthropology, the culture of poverty, and degeneration.  Throughout the semester, we will apply what we are learning to the discussion of contemporary ideas and conflicts regarding race and racism.

Session I. 

Introduction to the Course

Session II: 

Race before Enlightenment: Natural History, Human Variety, and the Classification of Nature
Thomas Gossett.  “Early Race Theories” in Race: the History of an Idea in America, pp.3-17.