Description:
An erudite examination of the origins of modern anthropology in the European Enlightenment in Germany.
Brief description: Carl Niekerk is Professor of German and Affiliate Professor of French, Comparative and World Literature, and Jewish Studies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He is the editor of The Radical Enlightenment in Germany: A Cultural Perspective and author of Zwischen Naturgeschichte und Anthropologie: Lichtenberg im Kontext der Spätaufklärung.
Review Quotes:
"Niekerk's intellectual history is powerful in the simplicity of its thesis: that in its development out of natural history, the discipline we know as anthropology converged on important conclusions about the unity and diversity of the human species in its interaction with the natural environment. . . . [It] admirably brings into focus those who made significant early advances in physical and cultural anthropology."
--Evan F. Kuehn The European Legacy