ABSTRACT
By the mid-eighteenth century, science was well on its way to becoming a full-blown and distinctive ingredient of Western culture. In the early stages of the development of science, the most fundamental operation was the collection of data and the subsequent examination, description, and arrangement of the data into categories according to certain explicit principles. Those persons who accumulated and often published data on the flora and fauna of strange lands and peoples came to be known as "naturalists". Taxonomic systems for the world's flora and fauna multiplied, as did efforts to identify and classify human groups. A scientific perspective on the world's realities thus began to emerge. The chapter explains the impact of eighteenth-century classifications. Nevertheless, all seventeenth-and eighteenth-century scientific classifications were burdened by the heavy weight of ethnocentrism, or cultural chauvinism, and subjective judgments on the physical features of non-Europeans.
