Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Research Grant: Beyond the Religious Pursuit of Race: Re-examining Secularization within Scientific Theories of Human Difference

介绍。该项目的核心研究问题是，即使在达尔文进化论被广泛接受以及19世纪地质学和考古学的发现之后，永久种族特征的概念（这一概念与17世纪和18世纪所假设的静态和公开的宗教自然观相一致）如何在人类差异的科学讨论中继续具有解释力。知识的优点。研究者将论证，与传统智慧相反，关于种族群体的有神论推理形式在现代种族科学公式中继续发挥重要作用，即使关于人类起源的明确宗教主张不再被认为是经验上可行的。研究人员将利用档案资料，展示美国科学家和医生如何借鉴18世纪自然主义者的观点，即种族特征是固定的、天生的，是一种“超越”力量的结果，以努力解释19世纪70年代至50年代初的人类遗传、种族混合和疾病。研究者将支持这样一种观点，即持久的关于“自然意图”的有神论观点证明了种族固定性的观点是正确的。最后，研究人员将通过研究非裔美国医生查尔斯·v·罗曼（Charles V. Roman）未被充分研究的工作，以及20世纪50年代撰写的著名的联合国教科文组织种族声明，来考虑20世纪中期对固定种族特征概念的质疑。潜在的更广泛影响。随着人们对种族特异性医学的兴趣日益浓厚，遗传学在行为科学中的应用越来越多，以及科学家和宗教团体在人类起源和进化理论方面的持续紧张，美国的学者、政策制定者和普通公众对塑造现代种族科学研究的早期历史有一个全面的了解是至关重要的。本论文的目的是通过使用科学和宗教的人类概念来推进医学和遗传学中现代种族类别是如何形成的现有知识，以便为学者、政策制定者和非专业公众提供重要信息。

Introduction. The research question at the center of this project concerns how the idea of permanent racial traits, a notion consistent with the static and openly religious view of nature assumed during the 17th and 18th centuries, continued to have explanatory power within scientific discussions of human difference even after the wide acceptance of Darwinian evolution and the 19th century discoveries made in geology and archaeology.Intellectual Merits. The researcher will argue that contrary to conventional wisdom, theistic forms of reasoning concerning racial groups continued to play an important role within modern scientific formulations of race, even though explicitly religious claims about human origins were no longer thought to be empirically viable. Using archival materials, the researcher will show how American scientists and physicians drew upon 18th century naturalist ideas that racial traits were fixed, innate and the outcome of a "transcendent" force, in their effort to explain human heredity, racial admixture, and disease between the 1870s and the early 1950s. The researcher will support the view that enduring theistic notions about the "intentions of nature" justified ideas of racial fixity. Finally, the researcher will consider mid 20th century efforts to contest the notion of fixed racial traits by looking at the understudied work of the African American physician Charles V. Roman, and the famous UNESCO Statements on Race written in the 1950s.Potential Broader Impacts. With the rising interest in racially specific medicine, the increased use of genetics in the behavioral sciences, and persistent tensions between scientists and religious communities in regard to theories of human origin and evolution, it is crucial that scholars, policy makers and the lay public in the United States have a comprehensive understanding of the early history that shaped modern scientific studies of race. The aim of this dissertation is to advance current knowledge about how modern racial categories within medicine and genetics were forged through the use of both scientific and religious conceptions of the human in order to provide crucial information to scholars, policy makers, and the lay public.