Nassim Taleb

Factual · Philosophy, ethics and society

“the enlightenment, coupled with the invasive growth of “science” started finding statistical differences in the abilities of people of different races.”

Nassim Taleb, essay author · November 2021 · On Christianity (foreword for Tom Holland's Dominion) (Medium/Incerto)

The Enlightenment, with the growth of 'science', started finding statistical differences in abilities between people of different races.

Mostly true True in substance, wrong in a detail.

What would count as true or false

Judge against historical scholarship on the origins of scientific racism. The claim has three parts: (1) a timing, the Enlightenment (roughly the late 17th to late 18th century); (2) a mechanism, the growing authority of 'science'; and (3) a content, claims of differences in abilities between races described as 'statistical'. TRUE: historians document that Enlightenment-era naturalists and philosophers (for example Linnaeus, Buffon, Blumenbach, Hume or Kant) began asserting, on claimed scientific or empirical grounds, differences in abilities between races, and that this was new compared with earlier periods; and the 'statistical' description is fair for the period's quantitative or empirical methods. MOSTLY TRUE: the timing and scientific framing hold, but 'statistical' overstates the methods, which were taxonomic or anecdotal rather than statistical in the strict sense, with true statistical claims arriving in the 19th century. MIXED: the scholarship is evenly divided on whether the Enlightenment, rather than earlier or later periods, marks the start. MOSTLY FALSE: such claims of racial differences in ability mainly arose in a clearly different period (for example as a 19th-century development) or were already well established before the Enlightenment, so that the Enlightenment's role is overstated. FALSE: the scholarship shows Enlightenment science did not make such claims.

Evidence

1. From Baconian Natural History to Kant’s Racialization of Human Differences: A Study of Philosophizing from Locations of Power Oxford Academic (OUP), book 'Kant, Race, and Racism: Views from Somewhere' · 20 April 2023

   “This chapter explains the originality of Kant’s theory of race and its practical relevance. Countless predecessors paved the way for him.”

2. From Baconian Natural History to Kant’s Racialization of Human Differences: A Study of Philosophizing from Locations of Power Oxford Academic (OUP) · 20 April 2023

   “From Baconian Natural History to Kant’s Racialization of Human Differences: A Study of Philosophizing from Locations of Power”

3. A Period of Doubt: Race Science before the Second World War Palgrave Macmillan (Springer), chapter by Nancy Stepan in 'The Idea of Race in Science: Great Britain 1800–1960' · 1982

   “Not until 1939 did Shapiro establish Boas’ conclusions beyond doubt by his careful, statistical studies of the changes in the body type of Japanese who had moved from Japan to Hawaii.”

4. A Period of Doubt: Race Science before the Second World War Palgrave Macmillan (Springer), chapter by Nancy Stepan in 'The Idea of Race in Science: Great Britain 1800–1960' · 1982

   “This, in a nutshell, was the dilemma of race biology in the 1930s and 1940s.”

5. From Baconian Natural History to Kant’s Racialization of Human Differences: A Study of Philosophizing from Locations of Power OUP Academic (Oxford University Press), chapter in Kant, Race, and Racism: Views from Somewhere · 20 April 2023

   “This chapter explains the originality of Kant’s theory of race and its practical relevance. Countless predecessors paved the way for him.”

6. Skin Color and Race American Journal of Physical Anthropology (Wiley), author Nina G. Jablonski · 2021

   “Hume's and Kant's writings on the superiority of European Whites, the inferiority of African Blacks, and the immutability of racial hierarchies had potent effects on the views of government leaders and business interests in Europe and America from the mid- and late 18th century onward.”

7. The history of science through the prism of race | BJHS Themes | Cambridge Core BJHS Themes (Cambridge University Press), authors Elise K. Burton and Sayori Ghoshal · 2024

   “The origins of race science proper are conventionally dated to the late eighteenth century, when European naturalists constructed taxonomic systems of organisms that included divisions of the human species into ‘varieties’ or ‘races’.”

8. The history of science through the prism of race | BJHS Themes | Cambridge Core BJHS Themes (Cambridge University Press), authors Elise K. Burton and Sayori Ghoshal · 2024

   “Alain Desrosières, Theodore Porter and Ian Hacking have explored the linked rise of statistical thinking and race science within nineteenth-century Europe.”

9. The beautiful skull and Blumenbach’s errors: the birth of the scientific concept of race BMJ · 20 December 2007

   “His original words also show how the simple, clear cut classification of five distinct human races displaced—against Blumenbach’s repeated warnings—the complex reality of gradations and the unity of humanity (including equal potential).”

Reasoning

E7 says historians conventionally date the origins of race science to the late eighteenth century, when European naturalists built taxonomic systems that divided humans into races. E6 records Hume's and Kant's 18th-century writings on European superiority and African inferiority, and E9 places the scientific concept of race with Blumenbach. Together these support the claim's timing and its scientific framing. The word 'statistical' overstates the methods, though: E8 links the rise of statistical thinking in race science to nineteenth-century Europe, and E3 places careful statistical studies even later. Under the criteria, that fits mostly true.

Cite this claim

Nassim Taleb, “The Enlightenment, with the growth of 'science', started finding statistical differences in abilities between people of different races.” (said November 2021). Verdict: mostly true. Reliability API, claim c_c41cb5edba88, method 0.1.0+28da144b. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_c41cb5edba88