Robert Knox: Racial Imagination, Transcendental Anatomy and Western Colonial Expansion

Abstract

The main purpose of this study is to discuss the nature of racial imagination in the work of Robert Knox, one of the founders of modern comparative anatomy and the author of The Races of Men: A Philosophical Enquiry into Influence of Race over the Destinies of Nations (1850), in the intellectual context of development of philosophic or transcendental anatomy and in the political context of colonial and imperial expansion of West in the nineteenth century. Robert Knox belonged to the intellectual influential group of Scottish political radicals and scientific materialists who played an important role in British academic life in 1820s and 1830s. These scholars shared the belief that new vision of Nature derived from continental German and French anatomical school should paved way for crucial social and political reforms aimed against interests of landed nobility and Church. However, in the 1840s the disillusionment came and the academic status of the above mentioned group was seriously shaken. The pessimistic racial teaching of Robert Knox was a fruit of this frustration and loss of scientific prestige.