“So much weak and inconclusive reasoning”: Race, Movement, and Pseudoscience in the British World, 1740–1820

Abstract

ABSTRACT The evaluative, pejorative category ‘pseudoscientific’ has, thanks to its questionable analytical value, been far less often applied to racial thought than in previous decades. Yet this tendency comes at the cost of obscuring one of the most interesting questions about racial ideas – how far were they not only conceivable, but respectable? This article makes the case for using the category of the pseudoscientific to describe early modern racial ideas, despite its apparent anachronism, because few labels can better capture the intellectual foul play at work. After exploring the development and use of ‘pseudoscience’ for a more recent era, this article discusses the evidence base for racial ideas – especially its close relation to movement and communication – before analysing a case study (the debate on polygenesis after 1770) replete with the features of ‘pseudoscience’.