ABSTRACT
The scientific pursuit to understand what makes us human became a driving force in the Victorian period. While still deeply steeped in religious belief systems based on the idea of a divine creator, Victorian scientists grappled with questions such as “What is at the root of human variations?” and “How did we get here?” As they pursued answers to these questions, they started to understand that “nature,” “biology,” and the “facts” of human similarity and difference were not reliant on supernatural forces, but rather the result of long histories of adaptation to different environments across the globe. While tensions did occur between the need to recognize, but not undermine, God’s role in human creation, over the course of the nineteenth century scientific inquiry explored new ways to understand how humans evolved. These new methods also served to maintain the rigid cultural belief systems of the majority—white middle- and upper-class male scholars and practitioners of what was termed “natural science”—resulting in the justification of imperialist activities under the banner of the British Empire, and the colonization and study of cultural groups different from their own.
