Sociology

In the nineteenth century, the growing credibility of the natural sciences made it possible to explain economic, political, and social inequalities between nations in biological terms. Darwin’s theory of natural selection was cited as ‘evidence’ of an evolutionary hierarchy of races, while the development of genetics underpinned the eugenics movement, with its claims of intellectual and cultural superiority for some races over others. Other measures as crude as brain size were used to explain differences between people of different races on psychometric tests. 197-200