-
Chapter 3: Geographical History of Human Beings and the Universally Dispersed Quadrupeds (1778–1783)
- State University of New York Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
Geographical History of Human Beings and the Universally Dispersed Quadrupeds (1778–1783) E. A. W. Zimmermann Eberhard August Wilhelm Zimmermann (1743–1815) is identified on the title page of the three-volume work from which the following selection is excerpted as Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy (Naturlehre) in the Collegium Carolinium in Braunschweig (often anglicized as Brunswick in conformity with the Low German spelling, Brunswieck). Zimmermann was then, we might correctly assume, a prominent, well-connected figure in his own lifetime, but to contemporary readers he is likely the least well-known of any of the figures with work included in this volume. The introduction to this selection will, therefore, include some extended discussion of his career and contributions to the development of geography in the latter decades of the eighteenth century through the 1820s. These comments will also make clear why the following text is as significant as it surely is for this volume and how and why Zimmermann’s account of human diversity differs so greatly as it does from that of Kant. No doubt the first thing that must be said about the text from which the following excerpt is taken is simply that Zimmermann’s Geographical History was apparently a much-heralded, landmark work from the decade in which it was written, the 1770s, inasmuch as it comprises a comprehensive examination and classification of the 550 mammals that had been identified by the first year of its publication, 1778. The inclusion of excerpts from this work in this volume serves then at least two purposes. First, Zimmermann, in the following text, actually singles out Kant for explicit criticism of his views on race from the 1777 article, “Of the Different Human Races” (see above, 73 74 E. A. W. Zimmermann 55–71). The fact that Kant’s investigations were taken seriously enough to merit detailed criticism from a relatively young, aspiring professor of mathematics and natural philosophy—who had studied at two prominent universities with continent-wide reputations in these areas—well demonstrates then that Kant’s interest in the subject of race in the 1770s was not a matter of merely minor significance or of no interest to others. But, second, familiarity with Zimmermann’s work, including an examination of the extensive references to the work of other investigators whose work he cites in the notes included with the translation of the text below, also provides the reader with a helpful “window” into the large—and, in many respects, still largely unexplored —body of literature that had already been compiled on the subject of human variability by the time Kant and Zimmermann entered the debate. Further exploration of these sources should thus be extremely helpful for anyone truly wishing to better understand the historical context in which Kant’s interests in “race theory” emerged and evolved. Familiarity with these sources can indeed help explain why Kant’s views could, when compared with the much less well-developed views of other prominent figures of this period, come to have the influence they arguably did. But who was Zimmermann? The following, brief comments on the life and professional career of Zimmermann focus, first, on his student years and the circumstances of his appointment to a position at the Collegium Carolinium in 1766, and, second, on his many publications, which span the years from the completion of his studies in 1765 to the year after his death in 1816, and even into the 1820s, when some of his most popular work appeared in new editions. These introductory comments will conclude then with a brief comparison of the major points of difference between the views of Kant and Zimmermann, which concern not only points of detail but entirely different levels of interest in what was no doubt one of the most keenly debated issues in mid-eighteenth-century European science and letters: how are we to reconcile our accounts of “living” nature, or what Kant will later refer to explicitly as “organic being” (organisches Wesen), with the mechanistic view of nature that had become a central feature of the philosophical understanding of the modern scientific revolution in the period beginning with the metaphysical reflections of René Descartes (1596–1650) through the physics, or “natural philosophy,” of Isaac Newton (1643–1727)—although the two figures from the early modern period who perhaps best formulated the problem are arguably Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) and, especially in Germany, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716). For Kant, of course, the search for a...