Lesson 3: Nature in the Enlightenment
As we saw in Lesson 1, the Enlightenment was a period of intense questioning and challenging of traditional forms of authority – in politics, religion and in science. Newton was the great hero of Enlightenment philosophers. Many 18th-century intellectuals hoped to reduce the complex phenomena of human behavior and social organization to a small set of universal laws, just as Newton had reduced the complexity of motion to a few simple laws. But for all their questioning of tradition and of the status quo, and for all their belief in the possibility of human improvement through education, almost all Enlightenment thinkers remained highly conservative in their views of gender and race. Very few of them seriously considered the possibility that women and people of color were equal to white men. However, although their views on gender and race were conservative, Enlightenment thinkers sought to justify their beliefs about women and people of others “races” in new ways. Rather than turn to the authority of the Bible or tradition to justify the social and political subordination of women and the enslavement of Africans, they turned to scientific accounts of the inferiority of women and blacks. Scientists in the eighteenth century argued that women had smaller brains than men and wider hips. They were thus NATURALLY incapable of rational thought and NATURALLY suited to bear and raise children. Similarly, numerous studies of Africans (and indigenous peoples throughout the world) consistently showed the NATURAL inferiority of people of color to white Europeans. This lesson explores some of these scientific discussions of gender and race.
Readings:
1) Kathleen Crowther, "Gender and Race in the Enlightenment"
2) Londa Schiebinger, "Why Mammals are Called Mammals: Gender Politics in Eighteenth-century Natural History"
3) Leila McNeill, "The Constellations Are Sexist" The Atlantic, August 16, 2016
4) J Smith, "The Enlightenment's 'Race' Problem, and Ours"
5) K. Malik, "On the Enlightenment's 'Race Problem'"
6) K. Malik, "The Making of the Idea of Race"
Learning Activities:
1) Video: Venus noir (part 1). CONTENT WARNING: This is a quite graphic depiction of racism and sexism, with strong suggestions of rape and sexual assault.
Assignments:
1) Quiz
2) Small group discussion - The legacy of scientific racism
3) Class forum - Doing science in the 18th century