My Reaction to Gould's "The Geometer of Race"

Main Ideas:
In his 1994 article in Discover magazine "The Geometer of Race" (link to article), Stephen Jay Gould (link to profile) mainly seems to argue three main points using the historical example of Blumenbach's (link to Wikipedia) theory of human racial classification published in 1795.

 
 

1. Main Idea 1: Gould writes that scientists' theories can never be completely objective, and that it is important for scientists to realize that their personal and cultural biases are imposed to some extent on their theories. Blumenbach's hierarchical theory of race based on perceived beauty of physical characteristics of white Europeans (especially Georgians) shows how subjective ideas can influence theories.
2. Main Idea 2: Secondly, scientists must also realize that their scientific theories can have a powerful ideological impact on society. Gould believes that Blumenbach's theory of racial classification had a "practical impact...almost entirely negative, upon our collective lives" similar to the level of the impact of nuclear bombs (p.4 in our Reader).
   
   Gould believes this negative impact in terms of supporting racism, slavery etc. in the 18th to 20th centuries was due to Blumenbach's theory. He writes "Where would Hiter have been without without racism, Jefferson without liberty. Blumenbach lived as a cloistered professor all his life, but his ideas have reverberated in ways that he never could have anticipated, through our wars, our social upheavals, our sufferings...." (p.9). This is highly ironic, according to Gould, because Blumenbach was a promoter of equality among races, and was NOT a racist compared to other people of his time.
3. Main Idea 3: Relating to the key word Geometer in the title, Gould seems to want to argue that scientific theories form a "mental geometry" that remains in people's minds. Blumenbach's theory is an example of "redrawing the mental diagram of human groups" and the impact of the theoretical shift was "broad and portentous in scope" because people now had a visual representation of the hierarchy of race in definable geometric terms. I think he means a sort of triangle, with Causasians at the top, and Africans and Asians at the bottom, which is one way to interpret the theory.

My Critique
----------------
So, are those three points reasonable and persuasive?

I feel that the first point is strongly supported by the Blumenbach example. It is clear that Blumenbach, in spite of his best efforts to be scientific and to support the moral and mental equality of all humans, was influenced by a bias toward superiority of Europeans.

The second and third points, however, are not fully persuasive. Gould fails to show what kind of effect Blumenbach's theory had on European society. He suggests that Hitler was influenced, but no connection between Blumenbach and Hitler is explained. It is left to our imagination, and I am skeptical out this. He also fails to show that people really interpreted Blumenbach's theory in a geometric way. Many questions remain. Who read Blumenbach's theory, and what kind of ideas did they get from them? How widespread was this knowledge of the theory? Also, didn't racism already exist anyway, even without his book saying that Caucasians came first? What effect did he exactly have outside of the ivory tower? Gould needs to explain these points further if he wants to convince a critical reader.

Extra:
Here's a PDF of an exchange between a critic and Gould regarding this article. In this exchange, I think Gould is persuasive, although he apologizes for the alteration of Blumenbach's original illustrations from flat to a triangle, which was done by the publishing company to show what Gould was trying to say. Gould didn't do it, but he takes responsibility for the visual representation done by the book editor. Blumenbach never made a clear image of a hierarchy in his treatise, which was almost all text in Latin, but I agree with Gould (I think, assuming that his translations of the Latin are accurate), that a hierarchy of beauty is being argued in the treatise.