Pearson and Morant: Biometric Racialism

Speaking of Race · Karl Pearson and Geoffrey Morant

In this episode we interview historian of science Iris Clever about her research untangling the early 20th century entanglements of the biometricians, physical anthropology, and race. She pursues this topic through the exploration of work by the statistician and Galton protégé, Karl Pearson, and one of Pearson’s favorite students, Geoffrey Morant. Morant, who publicly opposed Nazi racism in the 1930s and 40s, maintained the biological reality of race and the possibility of racial differences in mental characteristics.
 
Resources:
 

• Clever, I., & Ruberg, W. (2014). Beyond Cultural History? The Material Turn, Praxiography, and Body History. Humanities, 3(4), 546-566. https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0787/3/4/546/htm
• Morant, G. M. (1934). 126. A Biometrician's View of Race in Man. Man, 99-105. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2790912
• Morant, G. M. (1939). The races of central Europe: A footnote to history: G. Allen & Unwin Limited.
• Morant, G. M. (1952). The Significance of Racial Differences. Paris: UNESCO.
• Wagenmakers, E.-J. (2018, 5/3/2018). Karl Pearson’s Worst Quotation? [Racist quotes from Karl Pearson's writings].  Retrieved from https://www.bayesianspectacles.org/karl-pearsons-worst-quotation/