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Polygenism
(redirected from Polygenist)

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Polygenism 

a theory that views human races as different species having separate origins. Some advocates of polygenism contended that present-day mankind is represented not only by several species but even by several genera. Polygenism was used as the basis for various racist notions about the biological and intellectual inequality of human races. In the mid-19th century, for instance, the advocates of polygenism justified the legality of the slave trade. The untenability of polygenism is demonstrated by the similarity of various major characteristics, such as the structure of the hand and brain, among the races of modern man.

REFERENCES

Roginskii, la. Ia., and M. G. Levin. Antropologiia. Moscow, 1963.
Nesturkh, M. F. Proiskhozhdenie cheloveka, 2nd ed. Moscow, 1970.
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Firmin was at the forefront of critical inquiry into the subject in the nineteenth century, as he advanced the monogenist perspective on the evolution of humans when most European thinkers maintained a polygenist theory, which argued that the races evolved separately, not from a single source.
Obama, Africa, and the Post-Racial by Janis, Michael / CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
792) Here, it would seem that Emerson is endorsing a doctrine of the immutability of racial characteristics that would agree with the position of the polygenists.
'The best of nations'? Race and imperial destinies in Emerson's ... by Castillo, Susan / Yearbook of English Studies
 
 
 
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