Stanford Humanities Center
Directrice d’études, Ecoles des hautes études en sciences sociales
Kratter Visiting Professor, History Department, Stanford
The erudite James Burnet, Lord Monboddo (1714–1799), member of the Select Society and judge of the Court of Session in Edinburgh, wrote many pages about the existence of "men with tails" and orangutans’ humanity. For this reason, he has been labeled as "credulous," "bizarre," and "eccentric" both by his contemporaries and by modern scholars. This presentation takes his argument seriously to show that throughout his work Monboddo searched for evidence. If his belief in mermaids, giants, blemmyes, daemons, and oracles was far from reflecting the general attitude of the age of Enlightenment and empiricism, Monboddo contributed to placing the science of man at the center of the map of knowledge. In this Enlightenment science of man, the orangutan played a key role.
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About the Speaker
Silvia Sebastiani is a specialist in the Scottish Enlightenment and studies the entangled networks of animals, slaves, and material goods in the eighteenth century, exploring how they activated scientific, philosophical, political, and legal debates that re-framed the Enlightenment sciences of humanity. She is the author of The Scottish Enlightenment: Race, Gender, and the Limits of Progress and is working on a project on the boundaries of humanity.
When
Location
Silicon Valley Archive, Green Library, Seminar Room 126
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