Paper Summary:

This paper discusses how, although Charles Darwin and Franz Boas were paradigm-shattering theorists within their respective disciplines of biology and anthropology, their analysis of race reflected the common assumptions of their era, namely that the Caucasian race was superior to races of darker complexions.

From the Paper:

"Thus Darwin, to justify what he sees as self evident, namely the superiority of white, supposedly civilized human society over the society of individuals in Africa and India despite appearances to the contrary instead but argue from the suspect supposition that because humans are afflicted to different degrees by different external parasites (even though flies can afflict both horses and dogs and members of many different species) that this must justify the distinction of different species of humanity. Continually, Darwin falls into bad science when creating demarcations between the races. Darwin accepts the dominant racial paradigm of his day, begins with a self-evident thesis--that the races of humanity are different, even if this is against empirically observed evidence--and uses his science to justify society's assumption. With a lack of data regarding the sterility of interspecies relationships of the kind he used to apply to animals, he still insists on the existence of different races as inherently different because of color and perceived temperament and a few anecdotes. "

Sample of Sources Used:

• Boaz, Franz. "The Methods of Ethnology." From Race, Language, and Culture. 1940. 17 Feb 2006.http://instruct.uwo.ca/anthro/222/bometh.htm
• Darwin, Charles. The Decent of Man. 1871. 17 Feb 2006.http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/charles_darwin/descent_of_man/
• Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Third Edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.
• Shapin, Steven. A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England. Science and Its Conceptual Foundations (SCF) series. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.

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