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Blumenbach’s significance in the history of science

Temporalized History of Nature          Anthropology          International Dimension

Anthropology International Dimension

Temporalized History of Nature

Fossil from Blumenbach’s “Academic Museum” at Göttingen. Fossils were crucial evidence for the revolutionary reinterpretation of the age and history of the earth in Blumenbach’s time. Click on the image for a complete picture and details on the object.

The scientific work of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach belongs to the context of one of the most important scientific revolutions between the middle of the 18th and the middle of the 19th century. Comparable to the Copernican revolution three hundred years earlier, this revolution in the bio- and geosciences reduced the relative importance of human existence. While early modern astronomy did this in relation to space, in the 18th and 19th centuries the temporal dimension of existence was under discussion. Wolf Lepenies long ago called this “the end of natural history”, i.e. the transition from a statically understood, atemporal natural history to a temporalized history of nature. The earth gained a pre-history and the rapidly secularising sciences of geology and palaeontology immeasurably extended geohistory beyond the time frame of biblical chronology. Blumenbach’s long life bridged the biology of Carl von Linné on the one hand and Charles Darwin on the other. His works exemplarily show the interactions between the life sciences, the humanities and the social sciences of his day. His oeuvre is a key to our understanding of Europe’s scientific culture of the late Enlightenment and the Romantic period. Further reading Zammito, John H.: The Gestation of German Biology: Philosophy and Physiology from Stahl to Schelling. Chicago und London: University of Chicago Press, 2018; chapter 6 (pp. 172–185): From Natural History to History of Nature. From Buffon to Kant and Herder (and Blumenbach); chapter 7 (pp. 186–214): Johann Friedrich Blumenbach and the Life Sciences in Germany: His Rise to Eminence from the 1770s; chapter 8 (pp. 215–244): Blumenbach, Kant, and the “Daring Adventure” of an “Archaeology of Nature”. Lefèvre, Wolfgang: „»Das Ende der Naturgeschichte« neu verhandelt: das Spektrum historischer Naturkonzeptionen in der Goethezeit.“ In: Bomski, Franziska; Stolzenberg, Jürgen (ed.): Genealogien der Natur und des Geistes: Diskurse, Kontexte und Transformationen um 1800. Göttingen: Wallstein, pp. 25–42. Cf. preprint of conference paper “»Das Ende der Naturgeschichte« neu verhandelt. Historisch genealogische oder epigenetische Neukonzeption der Natur?” (2016), with very few variations in style and number of footnotes. See also select bibliography on Blumenbach’s contributions to geology and meteorite science and to palaeontology.

Temporalized History of Nature International Dimension

Anthropology

“Bildschöner Schedel einer Georgianerin”. Copper engraving from Blumenbach’s Abbildungen naturhistorischer Gegenstände, Vol. 6 (1802) No. 51. Click on the picture to enlarge. Following contemporary travel­ogues, Blumenbach attributed special beauty to the inhabitants of Georgia, cf. ; vgl. Figal, Sara: ”The Caucasian Slave Race: Beautiful Circassians and the Hybrid Origin of Euro­pean Identity.” In: Lettow, Susanne: Repro­duction, Race, and Gender in Philosophy and the Early Life Sciences. Albany: SUNY, 2014, pp. 163–186. Digital version.

Blumenbach is located at the beginnings of a debate in modern society that continues today about the origin of life, the origin of species, monogeny, polygeny, and indeed the issue of race. On the basis of his collection of skulls, he proposed a famous classification of human varieties. By additionally arguing for the unity of humankind, Blumenbach became the founder of scientific anti-racism. This fact is less known, and the project is intended to make also this major contribution of Blumenbach to science and society more visible. Specifically, our critical editing of Blumenbach’s doctoral dissertation De generis humani varietate nativa (1775 and later editions) will throw new light on the origins of anthropology, on anthropology’s disentanglement from biblical-sacred history, and also from the humanistic-philosophical orientation which was prevalent during the Enlightenment, and on its development towards a more strongly naturalistic-scientific approach. Further reading Junker, Thomas: “Johann Friedrich Blumenbach und die Anthropologie heute.” In: Gurka, Dezső (ed.): Changes in the image of man from the Enlightenment to the age of Romanticism. Philosophical and scientific receptions of (physical) anthropology in the 18–19th centuries. Budapest: Gondolat Publishers, 2019, pp. 125–142. Digital version. Rupke, Nicolaas A.; Lauer, Gerhard: “Introduction: A brief history of Blumenbach representation.” In: Rupke, Nicolaas; Lauer, Gerhard (ed.): Johann Friedrich Blumenbach: Race and Natural History, 1750–1850. London und New York: Routledge, 2019, pp. 3–15. Digital version on author’s hompepage. On Blumenbach’s contributions to anthropology see also • chronological list of Blumenbach’s publications on physical anthropology • research literature on the subject “Blumenbach and anthropology” (select bibliography) • lecture videos of the conference “Johann Friedrich Blumenbach and the Culture of Science in Europe around 1800” (2015).

Temporalized History of Nature Anthropology

International Dimension

Joseph Banks (1744–1820). Mezzotint by W. Dickinson after an oil on canvas (1771–1773) by Joshua Reynolds . Banks was President of the Royal Society (1778–1820) and served as Blumenbach’s gateway into English learned society.

Blumenbach’s writings and their publication and translation history exemplify the European and even transatlantic dimensions of the societas litterarum of his age. Blumenbach was in close contact with many of the leading naturalists in scientific centres such as Paris and London, but also Amsterdam, Geneva, Copenhagen, Padua and St. Petersburg. Noteworthy, too, are Blumenbach’s contacts with the young United States of America. As a teacher Blumenbach was exceptionally influential and inspired many of his pupils to follow in his footsteps. Several of them later occupied academic chairs in various parts of Europe, including Russia. Moreover, he influenced a number of scientific travellers and explorers, among whom Alexander von Humboldt and Maximilian Prince zu Wied. Further reading Biskup, Thomas: “Transnational Careers in the Service of Empire: German Natural Historians in Eighteenth-Century London.” In: Holenstein, André; Steinke, Hubert; Stuber, Martin (ed.): Scholars in Action. The Practice of Knowledge and the Figure of the Savant in the 18th Century. Volume 1. Leiden und Boston: Brill, 2013, pp. 45–70. Digital version (lizence required). Klatt, Norbert: “Lehrer und Schüler. Zum frühen Verhältnis von Johann Friedrich Blumenbach und Alexander von Humboldt.” In: Klatt, Norbert: Kleine Beiträge zur Blumenbach-Forschung. Band 1. Göttingen: Klatt, 2008, pp. 9–36. Digital version. See also select bibliography, sections reception and scientific relations with Great Britian.

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