Deconstructing the Myth of Pure Origins: How Christianity Shaped the Scientific Study of Race

It is often believed that the modern scientific study of race first emerged in and around the Enlightenment. During this time the study of natural history reached an unprecedented level of maturity and sophistication due largely to the discovery of novel plants, animals, and humans in the New World, and the increasing influence of materialist philosophy, which encouraged scholars to seek explanations for the origins of life that did not depend on supernatural intervention. The attempts of contemporary historians and anthropologists to place the birth of modern racial science within the Age of Reason often overlook the continued role that traditional Christian conceptions of time, nature, and human descent played in the minds of natural historians studying race during and well beyond the 18th century. This oversight has kept alive the myth that the Enlightenment emancipated modern racial science from a Judeo-Christian worldview and raises questions about which ideas have a legitimate place within the history of scientific theories of human difference.
Terence Keel is Visiting Assistant Professor of Black Studies at UCSB.

Image: A thirteenth century rendition of “T-O” map from the Etymologiae of Isidore of Seville (AD 560-636). The continents of Asia, Europe and Africa are shown as the domains of the sons of Noah: Sem (Shem), Iafeth (Japheth) and Cham (Ham). Image taken from the Harvard University map collection at Widener Library.

Sponsored by the UCSB History Department’s History of Science field.

jwil 11.x.2012