2014/01/01 by Staffan Müller‐Wille · 1 citation
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · #Race, Genetics, and Society #Race (biology) #Genealogy #Naturalism #Folio #White (mutation) #Biology #Zoology #Art history #History #Philosophy #Epistemology #Genetics #Botany
paper · doi:10.1057/9781137338211_10
openalex publication_date 2014/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
Many accounts of the history of the race concept place the naturalist Carl Linnaeus (1707–78), and his Systema Naturae (1735), at the beginning of modern concepts of race, in contrast to older notions that did not yet reduce race to physical traits, but presented it as the outcome of an inextricable entanglement of blood, soil, and customs. 1 In the slim, 11-page folio Systema Naturae (1735) that laid the foundations for the 22-year-old Swedish medical student’s future claim to fame, “man ( Homo )” was presented as part of the animal kingdom in a two-page tabular arrangement of classes, orders, and genera (Figure 9.1). Placing humans among the class of four-footed animals ( Quadrupedia )—animals possessing a hairy body ( corpus hirsutum ), four feet ( pedes quatuor ), as well as viviparous and breastfeeding females ( feminae viviparae, lactiferae )— and, within that class, among the order of the “human-shaped” ( Anthropomorpha )—alongside the apes ( Simia ), and the sloth ( Bradypus )— Linnaeus cleverly defined the genus Homo not by some presumably universal morphological or physiological feature, but by the human capacity for self-knowledge. What is interesting about this definition is that it addresses the reader by citing the famous dictum “Know thyself” ( Nosce te ipsum ), and then proceeds to split up the genus Homo into four distinct groups: the white European, the red American, the tawny Asian, and the black African. 2 These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.