scholarly journals Divine Variations: How Christian Thought Became Racial Science By T. Keel (2018)

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig Prentiss
Keyword(s):  
Stanford University ◽  
Racial Science ◽  
Christian Thought

Divine Variations: How Christian Thought Became Racial ScienceBy T. Keel (2018) Stanford: Stanford University Press, xii + 188pp.

Superseding Christian Truth

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terence Keel
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Common Origin ◽  
Racial Groups ◽  
American School ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Racial Science ◽  
History Of ◽  
Major Figure ◽  
Christian Thought

Chapter 2 analyzes scientific criticism leveled against the theory of common human descent beginning in the 1830s. It focuses on the thought of Josiah C. Nott, a southern physician, early epidemiologist, and major figure of the so-called American School of Ethnology. Nott claimed that humanity’s common origin, or monogenesis, was an unscientific belief and a mere carryover from when natural historians were indebted to Christian ideas about nature and human life. Thus, he attempted to establish an account of the history of human racial groups that moved beyond the constraints of the narrative recorded by Moses in the Bible. Despite these secular aspirations Nott ultimately failed to offer an account of race that stood independent of Christian thought. The case of American polygenism illustrates the degree to which modern racial science is indebted to a religious intellectual history it has attempted to deny and supersede.

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