Historical race concepts have varied across cultures and over time, and have been controversial for social, political and scientific reasons. Until the 19th century, race was thought by many to constitute an immutable and distinct type or species which shared particular racial characteristics, such as body constitution, temperament and mental capacities.
One concept, that of Christian Europe, conceived of the races as constituting a hierarchical chain of life known as the Great Chain of Being, which was believed to have been created by God, in which the people thought the Christian European races were closest to God in perfection.
Read more about Historical Race Concepts: Etymology, Earliest Views On Ethnic Differences, Medieval Theories, Early Modern Period, Age of Enlightenment, Racial Anthropology (1850-1930), Decline of Racial Studies After 1930
Famous quotes containing the words historical, race and/or concepts:
“Among the virtues and vices that make up the British character, we have one vice, at least, that Americans ought to view with sympathy. For they appear to be the only people who share it with us. I mean our worship of the antique. I do not refer to beauty or even historical association. I refer to age, to a quantity of years.”
—William Golding (b. 1911)
“The true worth of a race must be measured by the character of its womanhood.”
—Mary Mcleod Bethune (1875–1955)
“Science is a dynamic undertaking directed to lowering the degree of the empiricism involved in solving problems; or, if you prefer, science is a process of fabricating a web of interconnected concepts and conceptual schemes arising from experiments and observations and fruitful of further experiments and observations.”
—James Conant (1893–1978)