During the Victorian
age there was increasing disagreement on what Man (the traditional term for
the human species) was made of. The traditional view was that Man was created
in God's image as described in Genesis.
Most would agree that Man consisted of a body and a mind and/or a soul. Almost
without exception every account attributed to Man a special, unique, and untouchable
value compared to all other living things. Some still envisioned a great chain
of being stretching from simple monads to Man the crowning achievement of all
nature. Man was generally held to be utterly unrelated to all other organisms
until Charles Darwin (Descent of Man,
1871) began to stress the undeniable similarities between Man and other animals
so that the difference might be considered one of degree rather than a difference
of kind. However, we should not assume that there was an inexorable shift from
traditional Christian descriptions of Man to secular scientific descriptions
as the century progressed. Such an oversimplistic view is contradicted by the
large evangelical and other religious movements in Victorian times. Instead
there was a change from fewer to more diverse, often competing, definitions
of Man during the century.
What did gradually increase were attempts to study Man in ways similar to the natural subjects. These included physiological and anatomical studies of the human body, and several sciences of mind.
General
- Victorian sciences of mind
- Freud and Freudianism
- Phrenology: "the only true science of man"
- Race
- Race in Victorian Thought and Science
Of related interest
Classics in the History of Psychology. (Canadian site)
Morton, Peter, The vital science: biology and the literary imagination, 1860-1900. London & Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1984.
Last modified 28 September 2002