Historicizing Humans: Deep Time, Evolution, and Race in Nineteenth-Century British Sciences

337 Pages·2018·2.879 MB·English

by  Efram Sera-Shriar

H I S TO R I C I Z I N G H U M A N S
SCIENCE AND CULTURE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Bernard Lightman, Editor
H I S T O R I C I Z I N G
H U M A N S
Deep Time, Evolution, and Race
in Nineteenth-Century British Sciences
EDITED BY EFRAM SERA-SHRIAR
WITH AN AFTERWORD
BY THEODORE KODITSCHEK
University of Pittsburgh Press
Published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pa., 15260
Copyright © 2018, University of Pittsburgh Press
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Printed on acid-free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Cataloging-in-Publication data is available from the Library of Congress
ISBN 13: 978-0-8229-4529-1
Cover art: “Mammoth Hunt.” By Ernest Griset (1860s/1870s).
Courtesy of Bromley Historic Collections and Professor Tim Murray.
Cover design by Joel W. Coggins
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments vii
INTRODUCTION
From the Beginning: Human History Theories in
Nineteenth-Century British Sciences 1
Efram SEra-Shriar
CHAPTER 1
Contemporaries of the Cave Bear and the Woolly Rhinoceros:
Historicizing Prehistoric Humans and Extinct Beasts, 1859–1914 14
ChriS maniaS
CHAPTER 2
Of Rocks and “Men”: The Cosmogony of John William Dawson 44
nanna KatrinE LüdErS KaaLund
CHAPTER 3
Historicizing Belief: E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture,
and the Evolution of Religion 68
Efram SEra-Shriar
CHAPTER 4
The History of the “Red Man”: William Bollaert and the Indigenous
People of the Americas 91
maurizio ESpoSito and abigaiL niEvES dELgado
CHAPTER 5
Historicizing Humans in Colonial India 113
thomaS SimpSon
CHAPTER 6
How and Why Darwin Got Emotional about Race 138
grEgory radiCK
CHAPTER 7
The Comparative Method in “Shallow Time”: Walter Scott,
Thomas Carlyle, and Francis Galton 172
hELEn KingStonE
CHAPTER 8
The Future Evolution of “Man” 193
ian hESKEth
AFTERWORD
Historiographical Reflections on the Historicization of Humans
in Nineteenth-Century British Sciences 218
thEodorE KoditSChEK
Notes 231
Bibliography 285
List of Contributors 315
Index 319
vi contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This volume builds on and moves beyond an earlier collection of
papers that was published as a special issue in the journal Studies in
History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences in 2015.
My thanks extend to all of the contributors for their wonderful chapters. I am
also grateful to Peter Kjaergaard and Jamie Elwick for their encouragement
during the process of putting together this volume. Many thanks to Bernie
Lightman, Fern Elsdon-Baker, and the rest of the team on the “Science and
Religion: Exploring the Spectrum” project for their support in the early stages
of my research on E. B. Tylor. Earlier versions of some of the chapters from
this volume were presented at the annual conference of the British Society
for the History of Science in Swansea, UK, in July 2015, and I am thankful
to Adam Mosley for assisting in the organization of our panel. Finally, I am
indebted to Abby Collier and the anonymous referees for helping to bring this
volume to press.

H I S TO R I C I Z I N G H U M A N S