The Enlightenment was a cultural and intellectual movement in Europe during the 18th-Century; its purpose was to mobilize the power of reason and logic, promoting intellectual exchange and the scientific method. The philosophes attempted to examine and either prove or disprove ideas, both new and old, challenging a few older patterns of Western thinking through the use of scientific reasoning and logic. But on a larger scale, the new thought process served a very similar purpose: to justify often-biased “truths” and ideas to the public through trust in a superior authority, in this case the scientific method. The Enlightenment may have challenged older patterns of Western thought in some respect, but did not change drastically in terms of
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His “Essay” on the inequality of human races is now seen as one of the earliest examples of scientific racism, using disciplines ranging from linguistics to anthropology to prove the theory that all humans were anatomically, psychologically, and physically unequal . After defining "degeneration" for the first half of the book, Gobineau moved on to define the differences between races, the inequality of languages, the definition of civilization, and finally a hierarchy of languages in strict correspondence to that of the races . In the final chapter, titled "Recapitulation: The Respective Characteristics of the Three Great Races; The Superiority of the White Type, and, Within the Type, of the Aryan Family", Gobineau states that he has, "on physiological grounds alone", distinguished the "three great and clearly marked types" of humans, and that "physiology can proceed thus far with absolute certainty." The evidence used throughout his book is largely unsubstantiated and without citation, and critics of his work often use this as proof that his writing does not in fact constitute science . Fritz Fredreich even wrote that “the historical construction laid down in books 1-6 of the “Essay” cannot lay claim to scientific consideration, neither in general features nor in details.” His work is an example of faulty logic, history, and science twisted to prove a thesis, accepted due to bias in the public opinion, and subsequently used as proof for further faulty logic and science. Gobineau built almost purely off the past work of men like Linnaeus and Meiners, and working with the new definition of “science”, was able to effectively prove (to most) that
His “Essay” on the inequality of human races is now seen as one of the earliest examples of scientific racism, using disciplines ranging from linguistics to anthropology to prove the theory that all humans were anatomically, psychologically, and physically unequal . After defining "degeneration" for the first half of the book, Gobineau moved on to define the differences between races, the inequality of languages, the definition of civilization, and finally a hierarchy of languages in strict correspondence to that of the races . In the final chapter, titled "Recapitulation: The Respective Characteristics of the Three Great Races; The Superiority of the White Type, and, Within the Type, of the Aryan Family", Gobineau states that he has, "on physiological grounds alone", distinguished the "three great and clearly marked types" of humans, and that "physiology can proceed thus far with absolute certainty." The evidence used throughout his book is largely unsubstantiated and without citation, and critics of his work often use this as proof that his writing does not in fact constitute science . Fritz Fredreich even wrote that “the historical construction laid down in books 1-6 of the “Essay” cannot lay claim to scientific consideration, neither in general features nor in details.” His work is an example of faulty logic, history, and science twisted to prove a thesis, accepted due to bias in the public opinion, and subsequently used as proof for further faulty logic and science. Gobineau built almost purely off the past work of men like Linnaeus and Meiners, and working with the new definition of “science”, was able to effectively prove (to most) that