scholarly journals „Rasa czyli plemię”. Problemy z nomenklaturą u początku polskiej antropologii

2021 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanna Nowak
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Human Science ◽  
Classification Systems ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Organic World ◽  
Human World ◽  
Human Kind ◽  
Cultural Features

“Race or Tribe”: Problems with Nomenclature in the Early Days of Polish Anthropology This article presents the early stage of shaping Polish terminology connected with the human science, the origins of man and differentiation of humankind in the period when anthropology only began to separate from natural history, and its representatives attempted to make the scope of their research clear and distinct. This process of organising the organic world within the classification systems created for this purpose, including divisions of the mankind on the basis of physical and cultural features of people, was accompanied by an effort to unify scholarly nomenclature and establish a “systematic language”. This was a slow and often chaotic phase because scholars did not object to inconsistent nomenclature at all. In works popularising knowledge and in journalism even more disinformation appeared.The notion of race was accepted as a superior category that was to show a complexity of terms reflecting the divisions of the human kind. This term, from the second half of the eighteenth century used in Western literature to denote individual physical types of man, in the Polish writings was little known and as a rule other notions were in common use instead. Plenty of meanings, diverse and arbitrary application of notions made it necessary to organise this chaos and explain the most typical categories that the Polish authors of the Enlightenment and Romantic periods started to apply in order to describe the diversity of the human world. „Rasa czyli plemię”. Problemy z nomenklaturą u początku polskiej antropologiiW artykule zaprezentowano początki kształtowania się polskiej terminologii związanej z nauką o człowieku, jego pochodzeniu i zróżnicowaniu, w okresie, kiedy antropologia dopiero zaczynała wyodrębniać się z historii naturalnej, a jej przedstawiciele próbowali doprecyzować zakres badanego przedmiotu. Procesowi uporządkowania świata organicznego w ramach powstałych systemów klasyfikacyjnych, w tym podziałów rodzaju ludzkiego ze względu na cechy fizyczne i kulturowe, towarzyszyło ujednolicenie nazewnictwa naukowego, tworzenie „języka systematycznego”. Jego powstawanie dokonywało się powoli, często chaotycznie za sprawą samych badaczy, którym nie przeszkadzała nomenklaturowa niekonsekwencja. Jeszcze większa dezinformacja panowała w pracach popularyzujących wiedzę i publicystyce.Za kategorię nadrzędną, która posłużyła do ukazania złożoności formowania się terminów związanych z podziałami ludzkości, przyjęto pojęcie rasy. Termin ten, używany w literaturze zachodniej do opisów odrębnych typów fizycznych człowieka od drugiej połowy XVIII wieku w piśmiennictwie polskim był słabo upowszechniony i konsekwentnie zastępowany innymi określeniami. Bogactwo znaczeń, różnorodność i dowolność ich stosowania zrodziły potrzebę uporządkowania tego pojęciowego zamieszania i wyjaśnienia najbardziej typowych kategorii, które służyły polskim autorom formacji oświeceniowej i romantycznej do opisów zróżnicowania świata ludzkiego.

Scientific Culture and Mineralogical Sciences in the Luso-Brazilian Empire: The Work of João da Silva Feijó (1760–1824) in Ceará

2005 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-224 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Margaret Lopes ◽  
Clarete Paranhos da Silva ◽  
Silvia Fernanda de M. Figueirôa ◽  
Rachel Pinheiro
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Scientific Culture ◽  
Complex Interactions ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Scientific Context ◽  
Political Project

This paper argues that eighteenth-century Portuguese scientific policies promoted the inclusion of its main colony, Brazil, in the Enlightenment environment. This was accomplished by innovative initiatives, such as voyages to explore the colonial territory. Natural history activities, especially in mining, remained at the center of this political project and relied on co-opting groups of Portuguese in America. Based on the life of João da Silva Feijó, this article outlines the relevant connections between Feijó's scientific activities and the first Brazilian national expedition in the 1850s, which led to discussion about developing the Brazilian nation. This analysis is aimed toward the growing consensus in historiography of the sciences that scientific activities practiced outside European centers gave rise to complex interactions involving the processes of mondialization of sciences and the construction of a local scientific context.

2. America and the transatlantic Enlightenment

2021 ◽  
pp. 22-36
Author(s):  
Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
New World ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Revolutionary War ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Living Things ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
And Gender

‘America and the transatlantic Enlightenment’ explores how America played an important role in the making of the Enlightenment. The New World offered a startling new picture of the natural world and all the living things in it. America catalyzed new ideas about science, natural history, and human nature, which both shaped and were shaped by Enlightenment thought. British Americans drew on classical republican thought and contemporary ideas about natural law and this coalesced into a revolutionary republicanism—the nexus of ideas that animated the Revolutionary War. Though many of the ideas to emerge out of eighteenth-century America promised a radical new world of freedom and human possibility, they were also blinkered by long-standing racial and gender prejudices.

A naturalist of the Northern Enlightenment: Peter Forsskål after 250 years

2013 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. J. Baack
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Marine Biology ◽  
Arabian Peninsula ◽  
Plant Geography ◽  
Scientific Exploration ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
History Of ◽  
Attention To Detail

Peter Forsskål (1732–1763) was the naturalist on the Royal Danish Expedition to Arabia (1761–1767), a particularly rich example of the eighteenth century era of scientific exploration and a quintessential project of the Enlightenment. Forsskål is noteworthy for his early writings in philosophy and politics and for his outstanding contributions to the botanical and zoological knowledge of the Middle East, specifically Egypt and the Arabian Peninsula, principally Yemen. His biological work stands out for the large number of species identified, its attention to detail, the expansiveness of his descriptions, his knowledge and use of Arabic and his early ideas on plant geography. Forsskål's research in the marine biology of the Red Sea was also pioneering. His publications and collections represent the single greatest contribution to the knowledge of the natural history of the Middle East in the eighteenth century and are still valued by scholars today. His skill in retaining local terminology in Arabic and his respect for the contributions of local inhabitants to this work are also worth noting. When he died of malaria in 1763 in Yemen, the eighteenth-century world of natural science lost a promising and adventurous scientist.

DREADFUL ENEMIES: THE “BEAST,” THE HYENA, AND NATURAL HISTORY IN THE ENLIGHTENMENT

2015 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-61
Author(s):  
JAY M. SMITH
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Southern France ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Hybrid Character ◽  
Century Science

The hypothesis that the beast of the Gévaudan (an intriguingly mysterious killer that roamed southern France in the 1760s) might be an African hyena was not simply a popular and amusing misconception; it reflected an important dimension of the critical spirit driving eighteenth-century science. By historicizing natural discovery and its motivations, this essay uncovers aspects of Enlightenment natural history—namely an attraction to the unknowable and a desire for uncertainty, both reflected in the fascination with the sublime—that only became more marked as the frontiers of knowledge receded. In doing so, the essay shows the distinctively hybrid character of an Enlightenment mentality that savored both illumination and darkness.

The Notion of Civility in Contemporary Society

1980 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lewis A. Coser
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
Human Kind

Ever since the Enlightenment, most intellectuals on the liberal and radical end of the ideological spectrum have tended to stand for a morality and politics of authenticity, sincerity, and naturalness; while their conservative opponents defended the need for decorum, civility, and restraints. These differences were, of course, largely rooted in differing basic conceptions about the nature of the human animal. Traditionally, the conservatives had a pessimistic view of human nature and hence believed that it had to be curbed; they pitted their views against the progressive belief in the basic goodness of human-kind that emerged in the eighteenth century. When Rousseau proclaimed in Émile: ‘Coming from the hands of the author of all things, everything is good; in the hands of man, everything degenerates’, Bonald, the great critic of Enlightenment thought, answered: ‘We are bad by nature, good through society. The savage is not a man, he is not even a childish man, he is only a degenerate man’.

Natural history books in the library of Dr Richard Richardson

2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Edgington
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
History Books

During the first decades of the eighteenth century the wealthy Yorkshire naturalist Richard Richardson acquired a large library, particularly strong in natural history, medicine and antiquarianism. Virtually all the natural history component was dispersed before the library was catalogued, so its contents have been unknown. Richardson's unpublished correspondence with Sir Hans Sloane and William Sherard contains many references to his books and shows that they and other leading naturalists were the source of most of them, by donation and purchase. Of about 700 books in natural history that he possessed, 425 have been identified; an Appendix lists 300 of the more significant titles. Comparison is made with other natural history libraries, and the eventual fate of Richardson's is discussed.

The “New Empire of Common Sense”

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul B. Wood
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Atlantic World ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Joseph Priestley ◽  
Common Sense Philosophy

Although the rise of Scottish common sense philosophy was one of the most important intellectual developments of the Enlightenment, significant gaps remain in our understanding of the reception of Scottish common sense philosophy in the Atlantic world during the second half of the eighteenth century. This chapter focuses on the British context in the period 1764–93, and examines published responses to James Oswald, James Beattie, and, especially, Thomas Reid. The chapter contextualizes the polemics of Joseph Priestley against the three Scots and argues that it was Joseph Berington rather than Priestley who was the first critic to claim that the appeal to common sense was the defining feature of “the Scotch school” of philosophy. It also shows that Reid was widely acknowledged to be the founder and most accomplished exponent of the “school”, whereas Beattie and Oswald were typically dismissed as being derivative thinkers.

Classical Learning in Britain, France, and the Dutch Republic, 1690-1750

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Floris Verhaart
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
General Point ◽  
Classical Literature ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
Literary Value ◽  
Age Of Reason ◽  
Renaissance Humanism ◽  
The Enlightenment

The Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries was a moment when scholars and thinkers across Europe reflected on how they saw their relationship with the past, especially classical antiquity. Many readers in the Renaissance had appreciated the writings of ancient Latin and Greek authors not just for their literary value, but also as important sources of information that could be usefully applied in their own age. By the late seventeenth century, however, it was felt that the authority of the ancients was no longer needed and that their knowledge had become outdated thanks to scientific discoveries as well as the new paradigms of rationalism and empiricism. Those working on the ancient past and its literature debated new ways of defending their relevance for society. The different approaches to classical literature defended in these debates explain how the writings of ancient Greece and Rome could become a vital part of eighteenth-century culture and political thinking. Through its analysis of the debates on the value of the classics for the eighteenth century, this book also makes a more general point on the Enlightenment. Although often seen as an age of reason and modernity, the Enlightenment in Europe continuously looked back for inspiration from preceding traditions and ages such as Renaissance humanism and classical antiquity. Finally, the pressure on scholars in the eighteenth century to popularize their work and be seen as contributing to society is a parallel for our own time in which the value of the humanities is a continuous topic of debate.

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