Answer to Question #265734 in History for Kelsey Jand

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Why do you think Blumenbach regarded physical beauty as proof of superiority? Would he agree that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”? How do notions of beauty affect the value we attach to individuals and groups?

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Answer 1

Introduced the word Caucasian “to describe the variety of mankind—the Georgian—that had originated on the southern slopes of Mount Caucasus.” This, to Blumenbach, was the most beautiful race, and he said it must be “con- sidered as the primate or intermediate of these five principal races.” Other races represented “a degeneration from the original type.”2 Although Blumenbach regarded Caucasians as the first and most beautiful vari- ety of humans, he was careful to point out in A Manual of the Elements of Natural History: Although there seems to be so great a difference between widely separate nations, that you might easily take the inhabitants of the Cape of Good Hope, the Greenlanders, and the Circassians for so many different species of man, yet when the matter is thoroughly considered, you see that all do so run into one another, and that one variety of mankind does so sensibly pass into another that you cannot mark out the limits between them. Like Blumenbach, Petrus Camper was also preoccupied with the idea of beauty and order in the world. Trained as an artist before turning to science, Camper was a professor of anatomy at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. His interest in art and anatomy came together in the illustration on page 45, which originally appeared in a medical textbook printed in 1791, two years after his death. Camper lived at a time when the Dutch were deeply involved in the interna- tional slave trade. Although Camper was personally opposed to slavery, he was fascinated by the stories and the artifacts brought home by sailors and mer- chants involved in the trade. He saw the skeletal remains of animals and humans from distant lands as pieces of a puzzle—each piece was a clue to a bet- ter understanding of the order of nature. As a man of faith, Camper believed in monogenesis, the idea that all people share a common ancestry, even though, he thought that some groups had drift- ed further from the Biblical ideal than others. As a man of the Enlightenment, Camper believed that the world was ordered according to laws that could be dis- covered through reason and observation and then visually demonstrated. In such a world, he and others believed that an organism’s “outer state”—its appear- ance—reflected its “inner state,” its moral or intellectual worth. Convinced that ancient Greece and Rome had come closer than other civilizations to perfection, he used Greek statues to establish standards of beauty. He ranked human faces by how closely they resembled this ideal. After measuring dozens of statues, Camper found that their “facial angle” averaged44 Facing History and Ourselves

100 degrees. (The facial angle is the angle formed by two intersecting lines—one drawn horizontally from the ears to the nose and other formed by the shapeof the face from the upper lip to the forehead.) With this ideal in mind,Camper began measuring and sorting the skulls of apes and humans. He foundthat apes had a facial angle of 42 to 50 degrees. The average for the Europeanshe measured was about 90 degrees and for Africans 70 degrees. (The intersect-ing lines on the drawing below indicate “facial angles.”)In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, a number of scientists rankedhumankind along a “chain of being” based on Camper’s facial angles. The ideaof a “chain of being” dated back to the Middle Ages but gained new popularityin the years after Camper’s death. As Kenan Malik explains in The Meaning ofRace, “The Great Chain of Being linked the cosmos from the most miserablemollusk to the Supreme Being. Near the apex of this chain stood Man, himselfgraded by social rank. In this great chain, the humblest as well as the greatestplayed their part in preserving order and carrying out God’s bidding.”3Petrus Camper’s illustration of “facial angles.” CONNECTIONSLinnaeus tested the idea that all living things are related to one another. Whatideas were Blumenbach and Camper testing? To what extent were their methods Race and Membership in American History 45

good science—in the sense that they rigorously tested their hypotheses? To what extent did their approaches question “conventional wisdom”? To what extent did they reinforce conventional wisdom? Linnaeus, Blumenbach, and Camper were all men of faith. How did their reli- gious beliefs shape their observations of the natural world? What other aspects of their identity may have influenced the way they viewed differences among humankind? The value they placed on the similarities among humankind? Why do you think Blumenbach regarded physical beauty as proof of superiority? Would he agree that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”? How do notions of beauty affect the value we attach to individuals and groups? Look carefully at Camper’s illustration. If possible, project a slide of the image on a large screen and then discuss the illustration in small groups. —Try not to explain the picture, simply describe what you notice. Have someone in the group record your observations and those of your classmates. You may also want to record your own impressions in your journal. —Which faces look the most “human”? How does the artist use lines, shad- ing, and shapes to convey a message? What characteristics make the drawings seem scientific? Authoritative? —Based on your group’s interpretation, give the drawing a title. Camper called his drawing “The progression of skulls and facial expressions— from monkey, through black, to the average European and then thence to the Greek ideal-type.” To what extent does his title support your impressions of the drawing? What is the significance of the word progression? What kinds of proofs do you find more powerful—written proofs or visual evi- dence? Which is more likely to stretch the mind and inspire the imagination? Which is more difficult to forget? How do you think ideas like those of Blumenbach and Camper might have influenced people of the time? To what extent might the mystique of science keep the average person from questioning their ideas? 1. The Beak of the Finch by Jonathan Weiner. Random House, 1995, pp. 23–24. 2. Quoted in Race and Manifest Destiny by Reginald Horsman. Harvard University Press, 1981, p. 47. 3. The Meaning of Race: Race, History and Culture in Western Society by Kenan Malik. New York University Press, 1996, p. 43.46 Facing History and Ourselves

Science and Prejudice Reading 4Petrus Camper believed in monogenesis, the idea that all people share a com-mon ancestry based on the Biblical account of Adam and Eve. At the same time,he was convinced that some groups or “races” had declined further than othersfrom their Biblical origin. He also suspected that there were intellectual andmoral differences among the races as well as physical ones. In the mid-19thcentury, an American anthropologist, Samuel George Morton, extendedCamper’s work. But unlike Camper, Morton believed in polygenesis—the ideathat each race was created separately. He also maintained that each race is fixed,intrinsically different from all others, and incapable of being changed.Morton, a professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, held twomedical degrees and served as president of the Academy of Natural Sciences.According to the New York Tribune, “Probably no scientific man in Americaenjoyed a higher reputation among scholars throughout the world.”1 Like manyscientists of his day, Morton believed that intelligence is linked to brain size. Hetherefore tried to rank the races according to skull size. After measuring a vastnumber of skulls from around the world, he concluded that whites have largerskulls than other races and are therefore “superior.” He was not sure if blackswere a separate race or a separate species, but he did insist that people of Africandescent are different from and inferior to whites.The following quotations are from Morton’s Crania Americana, published in1839. They suggest how physical differences can become markers that predict agroup’s intelligence, personality traits, even morality. Europeans The Caucasian Race is characterized by a naturally fair skin, suscepti- ble of every tint; hair fine, long and curling, and of various colors. The skull is large and oval, and its anterior portion full and elevated. The face is small in proportion to the head, of an oval form, with well- proportioned features. . . . This race is distinguished for the facility with which it attains the highest intellectual endowments. . . . The spontaneous fertility of [the Caucasus] has rendered it the hive of many nations, which extending their migrations in every direc- tion, have peopled the finest portions of the earth, and given birth to its fairest inhabitants.