Re: Gobineau, the "Bayreuth Circle" and Schemann

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from [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Laon) contains these words:

{snip}

> As previously noted, Gobineau wasn't the father of scientific racism,
> as he's so often called; he wasnt the father of anything.  What is
> called Gobineau's racial theory was not devised by Gobineay: it was
> mainstream anthropological science of his day. We now know it was bad
> science, but the idea that there are distinct races with differing
> capabilities and mental characteristics was the respectable mainstream
> science of Gobineau's time and place.

{snip}

> It's worth observing that fortunately for Cuvier's reputation his
> texts on race appear never, not once, to have been translated into
> English. I have no desire to diminish Cuvier's reputation, as he was
> simply a man of his time. Linnaeus too.  But the fact that we hold
> Linnaeus' and Cuvier's names in high esteem while we condemn
> Gobineau's rests more on luck than justice*.

This is fascinating stuff, and reflects on Wagner directly, as well as
in relation to Gobineau. As I understand it from my history-of-science
friends, bad science is almost always the necessary precursor to good
science. It's like the way linguistics experts learn a language. When
they acquire a new word or construction or whatever, they use it
repeatedly, try it out in all sorts of situations, continually testing
to see where it fits. Inevitably it often doesn't, they find they're
speaking gibberish, and try another way till they get it right. That
seems to happen culturally. Thinkers in the past have done their best
with the knowledge at their disposal -- so, for example, the medieval
cosmology with its crystal spheres etc is not mere random nonsense, but
a reasoned attempt to make sense of the best perceptions its creators
had. It persisted until enough other perceptions accumulated to allow
people to apply their reasoning differently; so Milton's cosmology was
utterly shattered a relatively short time after his death, by the likes
of Newton.

Equally, therefore, Linnaeus and Cuvier were almost bound to apply their
new thought to try to make sense of the world they saw -- to explain why
some races had technology and others were squatting in the jungle, for
example. Naturally in doing so they and their contemporaries
incorporated the assumptions and prejudices common to their culture and
their time. The pioneering Scottish anatomist Dr. Knox, for example, one
of the greatest names in medicine in Cuvier's day, was a freethinking
humanitarian -- who believed the Irish ought to be exterminated, for the
good of humanity. For him and other scientists the concept of human
equality was the old-fashioned dogma, one of the many relics of
religious superstition which science ought to wipe out for the general
good; racial development -- an idea which existed before Darwin --
should naturally be analysed through the same new methods as plant and
animal breeding. This was the new, revolutionary thought of the era in
which Darwin, Wagner, Marx and Gobineau were born, and I guess one could
probably trace its influence in them all.* Naturally it was very often
misapplied, or used to reinforce existing prejudices, just as complex
economic arguments are often used today to justify a viewpoint which
boils down to "Eat The Rich!"

Cheers,

Mike

*(Which is not to say it was harmless theorizing! Knox's arrogant view
of humanity subsequently disgraced him. He bought suspiciously fresh
corpses for his lectures -- from a pair of Irish "resurrection men"! --
ignoring the possibility of unnatural death, because he seems to have
felt that the fates of such insignificant people hardly mattered,
compared to his science. When it all came out, his reputation never
recovered.}

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