Robert Knox

Robert Knox (4 September, 1791 — 20 December, 1862) was a doctor, natural scientist and traveller. He is best known for his involvement in the Burke and Hare body-snatching case in Edinburgh. However, in 1868 James Hunt described him as "the great modern British Anthropologist, whose cruel history has yet to be written..." To modern eyes Knox's anthropology's most striking feature is its virulent racism. This has eclipsed some of its intellectual novelty given the pre-Darwinian context that Knox wrote in.

Anthropological writings

In his writings Knox synthesised a perspective on nature from three of the most influential natural historians of his time. From Cuvier, he took a consciousness of the great epochs of time, of the fact of extinction, and of the inadequacy of the biblical account. From Geoffroy St-Hilaire and Blainville, he gained a spatial and thematic perspective on living things. If one had the skill, all living beings could be arranged in their correct placing in a notional table, and one would see both internally and externally the elegant variation of their organs and anatomy according to the principles of connection, unity of composition, and compensation. Goethe is another crucial addition to the Knoxian way of looking at nature. Goethe thought that there were transcendental archetypes in the living world which could be perceived by genius. If the natural historian were perspicacious enough to examine the creatures in this correct order he could perceive - aesthetically - the archetype that was immanent in the totality of a series, although present in none of them.

Related Topics:
Blainville - Goethe

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Knox wrote that he was concerned to prove the existence of a generic animal, "or in other terms, proving hereditary descent to have a relation primarily to genus or natural family". This way, he could lay claim to a stability in the natural order at the level of the genus, but let species be extinguished. Man was a genus; not a species. Insofar as Knox had any definition of species - for his thinking about it was hazy - races were species. Knox saw his work as an inspired sketch of the profound laws of race.

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