Reaction to Gould

Gould’s main point of the text "The Geometer of Race" is that scientists are not a kind of people who live in the ivory tower but whose ideas influence the society and the history even though the scientists themselves do not intend to. Blumenbach’s example argued in most of this text is an example that his change in the racial classification, only adding Malay, is small but has significant meanings. Blumenbach changed Linnaeu’s graphic classification into a hierarchical ordering with no objective reasons, which caused terrible impacts on society.

This text was descriptive so it was easy to understand what Blumenbach’s theory was, however, it was too long and made Gould’s own main idea weaken and difficult to catch. Also, it was not persuasive enough.