Thus, Tiedemann had reached one of the most important and most widely cited conclusions of early-nineteenth-century zoology. Yet he never extended this notion, the proudest discovery of his life, to establish a sequence of human races as well—although virtually all other scientists did. Nearly every major defense of conventional racial ranking in the nineteenth century expanded Tiedemann’s argument from embryology and comparative anatomy to variation within a sequence of human races as well—by arguing that a supposedly linear order from African to Asian to European expresses the same universal law of progressive development.
Even the racial “liberals” of nineteenth-century biology invoked the argument of “Tiedemann’s line” when the doctrine suited their purposes. T. H. Huxley, for example, proposed a linear order of races to fill the gap between apes and humans as an argument for evolutionary intermediacy: “The difference in weight of brain between the highest and the lowest man is far greater, both relatively and absolutely, than that between the lowest man and the highest ape.”
But Tiedemann himself, the inventor of the basic argument, would not extend his doctrine into a claim that variation within a species (distinctions among human races in this case) must follow the same linear order as differences among related species. I can only assume that he demurred (as logic surely permits, and as later research has confirmed, for variations within and among species represent quite different biological phenomena) because he did not wish to use his argument as a defense for racial ranking. At least we know that one of his eminent colleagues read his silence in exactly this light—For Richard Owen, refuting Huxley’s claim, cited Tiedemann with the accolade used as a title to this essay:
Although in most cases the Negro’s brain is less than that of the European, I have observed individuals of the Negro race in whom the brain was as large as the average one of Caucasians; and I concur with the great physiologist of Heidelberg, who has recorded similar observations, in connecting with such cerebral development the fact that there has been no province of intellectual activity in which individuals of the pure Negro race have not distinguished themselves.
2. Developing the first major data set and then failing to notice an evident conclusion not in your favor (even if not particularly damaging, either).
When I wrote The Mismeasure of Man, published in 1981, I discovered that most of the major data sets presented in the name of racial ranking contained evident errors that should have been noted by their authors, and would have reversed their conclusions, or at least strongly compromised the apparent strength of their arguments. Even more interestingly, I found that those scien-tists usually published the raw data that allowed me to correct their errors. I therefore had to conclude that these men had not based their conclusions upon conscious fraud—for fakers try to cover up the tracks of their machinations. Rather, their errors had arisen from unconscious biases so strong and so unquestioned (or even unquestionable in their system of beliefs and values) that information now evident to us remained invisible to them.
Fair is fair. The same phenomenon of unconscious bias must also be exposed in folks we admire for the sagacity, even the moral virtue, of their courageous and iconoclastic conclusions—for only then can we extend an exposé about beliefs we oppose into a more interesting statement about the psychology and sociology of scientific practice in general.
I have just discovered an interesting instance of nonreporting in the tables that Tiedemann compiled to develop his case for equality in brain sizes among human races. (To my shame, I never thought about pursuing this exercise when I wrote The Mismeasure of Man, even though I reported Paul Broca’s valid critiques of different claims in Tiedemann’s data to show that Broca often criticized others when their conclusions denied his own preferences, but did not apply the same standards to “happier” data of his own construction.)
Tiedemann’s tables, the most extensive quantitative study of variation available in 1836, provides raw data for 320 male skulls in all five of Blumenbach’s major races, including 101 “Caucasians” and 38 “Ethiopians” (African blacks). But Tiedemann only lists each skull individually (in old apothecaries’ weights of ounces and drams), and presents no summary statistics for groups—no ranges, no averages. But these figures can easily be calculated from Tiedemann’s raw data, and I have done so in the appended table.
Tiedemann bases his argument entirely on the overlapping ranges of smallest to largest skulls in each race—and we can scarcely deny his correct conclusion that no difference exists between Ethiopians (32 to 54 ounces among 38 skulls) and Europeans (28 to 57 ounces for a larger sample of 101 skulls). But as I scanned his charts of raw data. I suspected that I might find some interesting differences among the means for each racial group—the obvious summary statistic (even in Tiedemann’s day) for describing some notion of an average.
Indeed, as my table and chart show, Tiedemann’s uncalculated mean values do differ—and in the traditional order advocated by his opponents, with gradation from a largest Caucasian average, through intermediary values for Malayans, Americans (so-called “Indians,” not European immigrants), and Mongolians, to lowest measures for his Ethiopian group. The situation becomes even more complicated when we recognize that these mean differences do not challenge Tiedemann’s conclusion, even though an advocate for the other side could certainly advertise this information in such a false manner. (Did Tiedemann calculate these means and not publish them because he sensed the confusion that would then be generated—a procedure that I would have to label as indefensible, however understandable? Or did he never calculate them because he got what he wanted from the more obvious data on ranges, and then never proceeded further—the more common situation of failure to recognize potential interpretations as a consequence of unconscious bias. I rather suspect the second scenario, as more consistent with Tiedemann’s personal procedures and the actual norms, as opposed to the stated desirabilities, of scientific study in general, but I cannot disprove the first conjecture.)
Tiedemann’s means, with Expanded Scale
My compilation of average values of brain mass for each race, as calculated from raw data that Tiedemann presented but did not use for such a calculation.
My appended graph of Tiedemann’s uncalculated data does validate his position. The ranges are large and fully overlapping for the crucial comparison of Caucasians and Ethiopians (with the substantially larger Caucasian sample including the smallest and the largest single skull for the entire sample of both groups, as expected). The differences in mean values are tiny compared with the ranges, and, for this reason, probably of no significance in the judgment of intelligence. Moreover, the small variation among means probably reflects differences in body size rather than any stable distinction among races—and Tiedemann had documented the positive correlation of brain and body size in asserting the equality of brains in men and women (as previously cited). Tiedemann’s own data indicate the probable control of mean differences in brain weight by body size. He divides his Caucasian chart into two parts by geography—for Europeans and Asians (mostly East Indians). He also notes that Caucasian males from Asia tend to be quite small in body size. Note that his mean brain size for these (presumably smallest-bodied) Caucasians from Asia stands at 36.04 ounces, the minimal value of his entire chart, lying well below the Ethiopian mean of 37.84 ounces.
But data can be “massaged” to advance almost any desired point, even when nothing “technically” inaccurate mars the presentation. For example, the mean differences in Tiedemann’s data look trivial when properly scaled against the large ranges of each sample. But if I expand the scale, amalgamate the European and Asian Caucasians into one sample (Tiedemann kept them separate), omit the ranges, and plot only the mean values in conventional order of nineteenth-century racial rankings, the distinctions can be made to seem quite large, and an unsophisticated observer might well conclude that significant differences in intrinsic mental capacity had been documented.
A differen
t presentation of both ranges and average values for the brain mass of each major race, calculated by me from Tiedemann’s data. Note that the mean values (the vertical black line in the middle of each horizontal white bar, representing the full ranges for each race) scarcely differ in comparison with the full overlap of ranges, thus validating Tiedemann’s general conclusion.
In conclusion, since Tiedemann clearly approached his study of racial differences with a predisposition toward egalitarian conclusions, and since he differed from nearly all his scientific colleagues in promoting this result, we must seek the source for his defense largely outside the quality and persuasive character of his data. Indeed, and scarcely surprising for an issue so salient in Tiedemann’s time and so continually troubling and tragic ever since, he based his judgment on a moral question that, as he well understood, empirical data might illuminate but could never resolve: the social evils of racism, and particularly of slavery.
Tiedemann recognized that scientific data about facts of nature could not validate moral judgments about the evils of slavery—as conquerors could always invent other justifications for enslaving people judged equal to themselves in mental might, while many abolitionists accepted the inferiority of black Africans, but argued all the more strongly for freedom because decency requires special kindness toward those not so well suited for success. But Tiedemann also appreciated a social reality that blurred the logical separation of facts and morals: in practice, most supporters of slavery promoted inferiority as an argument for tolerating an institution that would otherwise be hard to justify under a rubric of supposedly “Christian” values: if “they” are not like “us,” and if “they” are too benighted to govern themselves in the complexities of modern living, then “we” gain the right to take over. If scientific facts pointed to equality of intellectual capacity, then many conventional arguments for slavery would fall.
Modern scientific journals generally insist upon the exclusion of overt moral arguments from ostensibly factual accounts of natural phenomena. But the more literary standards and interdisciplinary preferences of Tiedemann’s time permitted far more license, even in leading scientific journals like the Philosophical Transactions (an appropriate, if now slightly archaic, name used by this great scientific journal since its foundation in the seventeenth century). Tiedemann could therefore state his extrascientific reasons literally “up front”—for the first paragraph of his article announces both his scientific and ethical motives, and also resolves the puzzle of his decision to publish in English:
I take the liberty of presenting to the Royal Society a paper on a subject which appears to me to be of great importance in the natural history, anatomy, and physiology of Man; interesting also in a political and legislative point of view. Celebrated naturalists . . . look upon the Negroes as a race inferior to the European in organization and intellectual powers, having much resemblance with the Monkey. . . . Were it proved to be correct, the Negro would occupy a different situation in society from that which has been so lately given him by the noble British Government.
In short, Tiedemann published his paper in English to honor and commemorate the abolition of the slave trade in Great Britain. The process had been long and tortuous (also torturous). Under the vigorous prodding of such passionate abolitionists as William Wilberforce, Britain had abolished the West Indian slave trade in 1807, but had not freed those already enslaved. (Wilberforce’s son, Bishop Samuel, aka “Soapy Sam,” Wilberforce became an equally passionate anti-Darwinian—for what goes around admirably can come around ridiculously, and history often repeats itself by Marx’s motto, “the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.”) Full manumission, with complete abolition, did not occur until 1834—a great event in human history that Tiedemann chose to celebrate in the most useful manner he could devise in his role as a professional scientist: by writing a technical article to promote a true argument that, he hoped, would do some moral good as well.
I cited Tiedemann’s opening paragraph to praise his wise mixture of factual information and moral concern, and to resolve the puzzle of his publication in a foreign tongue. I can only end with his closing paragraph, an even more forceful statement of the moral theme, and a testimony to a most admirable man, whom history has forgotten, but who did his portion of good with the tools that his values, his intellectual gifts, and his sense of purpose had provided:
The principal result of my researches on the brain of the Negro is, that neither anatomy nor physiology can justify our placing them beneath the Europeans in a moral or intellectual point of view. How is it possible, then, to deny that the Ethiopian race is capable of civilization? This is just as false as it would have been in the time of Julius Caesar to have considered the Germans, Britons, Helvetians, and Batavians incapable of civilization. The slave trade was the proximate and remote reason of the innumerable evils which retarded the civilization of the African tribes. Great Britain has achieved a noble and splendid act of national justice in abolishing the slave trade. The chain which bound Africa to the dust, and prevented the success of every effort that was made to raise her, is broken.
VIII
Triumph and Tragedy on the Exact Centennial of I Have Landed, September 11, 2001
Introductory Statement
THE FOUR SHORT PIECES IN THIS FINAL SECTION, ADDED for obvious and tragic reasons after the completion of this book in its original form, chronicle an odyssey of fact and feeling during the month following an epochal moment that may well be named, in history’s archives, simply by its date rather than its cardinal event—not D-Day, not the day of JFK’s assassination, but simply as “September 11th.” I would not have been able to bypass the subject in any case, but I simply couldn’t leave this transformation of our lives and sensibilities unaddressed in this book, because my focus and title—I Have Landed—memorializes the beginning of my family in America at my grandfather’s arrival on September 11, 1901, exactly, in the most eerie coincidence that I have ever viscerally experienced, 100 years to the day before our recent tragedy, centered less than a mile from my New York home. The four pieces in this set consciously treat the same theme, and build upon each other by carrying the central thought, and some actual phrases as well, from one piece to the next in sequence—a kind of repetition that I usually shun with rigor in essay collections, but that seems right, even required, in this singular circumstance. For I have felt such a strong need, experienced emotionally almost as a duty, to emphasize a vital but largely invisible theme of true redemption, so readily lost in the surrounding tragedy, but flowing from an evolutionary biologist’s professional view of complex systems in general, and human propensities in particular: the overwhelming predominance of simple decency and goodness, a central aspect of our being as a species, yet so easily obscured by the efficacy of rare acts of spectacularly destructive evil. Thus, one might call this section “four changes rung on the same theme of tough hope and steadfast human nature”—as my chronology moves from some first thoughts in “exile” in Halifax, to first impressions upon returning home to Ground Zero, to musings on the stunning coincidence at the centennial of I Have Landed, to more general reflections, at a bit more emotional distance, of a lifelong New Yorker upon the significance of his city’s great buildings and their symbolic meaning for human hope and transcendence.
28
The Good People of Halifax16
IMAGES OF DIVISION AND ENMITY MARKED MY FIRST CONtact, albeit indirect, with Nova Scotia—the common experience of so many American schoolchildren grappling with the unpopular assignment of Longfellow’s epic poem Evangeline, centered upon the expulsion of the Acadians in 1755. My first actual encounter with Maritime Canada, as a teenager on a family motor trip in the mid-1950s, sparked nothing but pleasure and fascination, as I figured out the illusion of Moncton’s magnetic hill, marveled at the tidal phenomena of the Bay of Fundy (especially the reversing rapids of Saint John and the tidal bore of Moncton), found peace of spirit at Peggy’s Cove, and learned some hi
story in the old streets of Halifax.
I have been back, always with eagerness and fulfillment, a few times since, for reasons both recreational and professional—a second family trip, one generation later, and now as a father with two sons aged 3 and in utero; a lecture at Dalhousie; or some geological field work in Newfoundland. My latest visit among you, however, was entirely involuntary and maximally stressful. I live in lower Manhattan, just one mile from the burial ground of the Twin Towers. As they fell victim to evil and insanity on Tuesday, September 11, during the morning after my sixtieth birthday, my wife and I, en route from Milan to New York, flew over the Titanic’s resting place and then followed the route of her recovered dead to Halifax. We sat on the tarmac for eight hours, and eventually proceeded to the cots of Dartmouth’s sports complex, then upgraded to the adjacent Holiday Inn. On Friday, at three o’clock in the morning, Alitalia brought us back to the airport, only to inform us that their plane would return to Milan. We rented one of the last two cars available and drove, with an intense mixture of grief and relief, back home.
The general argument of this piece, amidst the most horrific specifics of any event in our lifetime, does not state the views of a naively optimistic Pollyanna, but rather, and precisely to the contrary, attempts to record one of the deepest tragedies of our existence. Intrinsic human goodness and decency prevail effectively all the time, and the moral compass of nearly every person, despite some occasional jiggling prompted by ordinary human foibles, points in the right direction. The oppressive weight of disaster and tragedy in our lives does not arise from a high percentage of evil among the summed total of all acts, but from the extraordinary power of exceedingly rare incidents of depravity to inflict catastrophic damage, especially in our technological age when airplanes can become powerful bombs. (An even more evil man, armed only with a longbow, could not have wreaked such havoc at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415.)