Revisiting Enlightenment Racial Classification: Time and the Question of Human Diversity

The Enlightenment is commonly held accountable for the rise of both racial classification and modern scientific racism. Yet this argument sits uneasily alongside the birth of a modern rights language and strong anticolonial perspectives within the same intellectual movement. This article seeks to make sense of this paradox by arguing that one of the contexts in which we can best understand eighteenth-century race concepts is humanity’s place in a transformed history of nature that brought together novel understandings of deep time and a materialist view of reproduction. Analysing the thought of Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon and Denis Diderot, the article demonstrates that the waning of both the authority of biblical genealogies and ancient environmentalist explanations of human physical diversity left a lacuna in the eighteenth-century human sciences. Buffon and Diderot’s “races” of humanity are not fixed entities, but rather exist in the flux of time. New understandings of heredity and reproduction combined with a time revolution led these Enlightenment thinkers to reconceive humanity’s place in the natural world. The article suggests that while “race” is a biologically incoherent concept, two elements of these Enlightenment thinkers’ anthropology – a materialist understanding of reproduction and humanity’s place in deep time – remain central to how we understand human diversity

Analyyttisen tiedon kerääminen verkkosivuilta

Insinöörityön tarkoituksena oli ottaa web-analytiikka käyttöön suomalaisessa catering-alan yrityksessä ja suorittaa tiedon keräämistä varten tarvittavat toimenpiteet. Web-analytiikan tarve ilmeni toteutetun verkkosivu-uudistuksen ja verkkomarkkinoinnin tehostamisen myötä. Verkkosivustolla on tärkeä rooli uusien asiakkaiden hankinnassa ja asiakastyytyväisyyden ylläpitäjänä, minkä vuoksi sivustouudistuksen vaikutuksia verkkosivuston kävijäliikenteeseen haluttiin mitata. Projektissa otettiin käyttöön valittu analytiikkatyökalu ja määriteltiin verkkosivuston tavoitteiden sekä yrityksen omien markkinointitavoitteiden kautta kävijäseurannassa käytettävät mittarit ja raportit. Valituista raporteista eroteltiin yrityksen kannalta olennaisin seurantatieto, jolla päästään tiedon keräämisessä hyvin alkuun ja saadaan kattavat välineet web-analytiikan ottamiseksi osaksi yrityksen päivittäistä verkkomarkkinointia. Pääpaino raporttien valinnassa oli kävijäliikenteen kasvattamisessa ja sivuston käyttäjien sitouttamisessa. Insinöörityössä tarkasteltiin teorialähteiden avulla web-analytiikan ja erityisesti tiedon keräämisen eli kävijäseurannan merkitystä nykypäivän verkkomarkkinoinnissa. Työssä tutustuttiin erilaisiin tiedonkeruumenetelmiin ja niiden keskinäisiin eroihin. Projektissa käytettyyn työkaluun perehdyttiin muita menetelmiä tarkemmin ja selvitettiin sen toiminta sekä tärkeimmät ominaisuudet ja pohdittiin sen ylivoimaista asemaa analytiikkaohjelmistojen keskuudessa. Insinöörityössä keskityttiin web-analytiikkaan pelkästään tiedon keräämisen näkökulmasta, joten varsinaisen analysoinnin tulokset saadaan vasta myöhemmin kävijäseurannan edetessä. Työn on tarkoitus toimia suunnitelman kaltaisena työvälineenä, jota asiakasyritys voi käyttää tulevaisuudessa web-analytiikan ja tiedon keräämisen lähtökohtana. Myöhemmin, kun mittaustuloksia on enemmän, pystytään paremmin arvioimaan raporttien ja mittareiden mahdollinen uudelleen määrittämisen tarve ja tekemään saadun tiedon perusteella konkreettisia muutoksia verkkosivustolle ja markkinointistrategiaan.The purpose of this thesis is to introduce analytics and to describe how data collection was began for a Finnish catering company website. Following the renewing of the website and increased online marketing actions, a need for web analytics was noticed. The ability to measure visitor traffic and other actions on the renewed website was thought to be essential. The project included the setup of the selected analytics tool, and the selection of the metrics and reports that would be used based on the marketing goals of the company. In actual data collection, the emphasis was on increasing visitor traffic and engaging customers. The study examined the significance of web analytics and visitor tracking in today’s online marketing. The study dealt with different data collection methods and went through their differences. The method used in the project was researched thoroughly, and the functionality, qualities and superiority compared to other analytics tools are clarified in the thesis. As this thesis focused only on the data collection part of the web analytics, the results of the actual analysis are not available until later when a sufficient amount of website visitor data has been collected. In conclusion, this thesis serves as a starting point which can be used for future web analytics

Introduction to the Special Issue 'Enlightenment and Modernity'

These introductory remarks present a brief overview of the question of the Enlightenment’s relationship to modernity. It charts the emergence of a novel sense of historicity connected to eighteenth-century usage of the term ‘enlightened’ and the belated, late twentieth-century attempts to connect this usage to modernity. The three contributions to this special issue are then introduced and the commonalities and divergences between them are highlighted

The Colour of Equality: Racial Classification and Natural Equality in Enlightenment Encyclopaedias

While it may seem obvious that human beings should be treated equally before the law and given equal opportunities to succeed, much of recorded history actually demonstrates the exact opposite: hierarchy and innate inequalities were generally seen as both natural and inevitable. It was only during the eighteenth-century Enlightenment that equality was given the benefit of the doubt and inequality came to be seen as something abhorrent and in need of justification. Equality struck a deep emotional chord among an ever-broadening cross-section of European society and would be discussed and debated everywhere from the coffeehouses and the literary salons, to the universities and the scientific academies. Yet, those very thinkers who gave equality its political bite invented a new and powerful discourse of inequality: modern racial classification. Using three major Enlightenment encyclopaedias–Ephraim Chambers’s Cyclopaedia, Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie, and Fortunato Bartolomeo De Felice’s Encyclopédie d’Yverdon–this dissertation places ideas of cross-cultural equality and racial inequality in their historical context to shed light on the nature of the Enlightenment. The philosophes used physical features to categorize humanity into novel ‘racial’ groups in a discourse that was imbued with Eurocentric aesthetic and moral judgments. The growth of race-based slavery in the European colonies of the New World combined with the empiricism of the new science to give physical features an unprecedented importance in the classification of humanity. What is often overlooked in the scholarship on the invention of racial classification, however, is how the race concept fit into a new secular perspective on humanity. I demonstrate that race formed part of the Enlightenment’s engagement with humanity on a new explanatory axis that superseded a parochial religious framework. It was important in Enlightenment life science because it incorporated new understandings of heredity, generation, and deep time into the study of humankind. Many of the very same thinkers who contributed to racial classification also politicized equality by putting it to new uses, such as in a vitriolic denunciation of slavery and inhumane treatment that was grounded in the nascent philosophy of human rights. We find the harshest and most thoroughgoing denunciation of slavery in French thought up to 1765 in Diderot's Encyclopédie, predicated on the idea that all human beings are fundamentally equal to one another. This argument is elaborated and strengthened in the Encyclopédie d'Yverdon. The tension between race and equality in Enlightenment thought can best be explained by the philosophes' attempt to provide a naturalistic account of humanity, in both our physical and moral attributes. In terms of the 'physical,' this meant including the human species in novel natural histories. In terms of the 'moral,' the philosophes sought the origins of human morality outside of scripture, in social experience alone. Rising inequality is one of the most pressing issues of our time and race continues to raise hackles in scientific and popular debates. This dissertation demonstrates that both concepts–equality and race–can best be understood within the framework of the Enlightenment, an intellectual epoch from which we have never really exited

Wat de Verlichting bijeenhield: Gelijkheid, maatschappij en godsdienst in achttiende-eeuwse encyclopedieën

One of the key trends in scholarship on the Enlightenment since the early 1980s has been the fragmentation of the movement into numerous strands based variously on national context, religion, or philosophical school, a fragmentation that risks emptying the signifier ‘Enlightenment’ of all meaning. This article argues that analyzing the concepts of ‘equality’ and ‘society’ in Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie and one of its most important successors, the Swiss Encyclopédie d’Yverdon, enables us to see that, in spite of the very real philosophical, religious, and political differences between Enlightenment thinkers, the movement can nonetheless be characterized as possessing thin coherence. Religion became compartmentalized in an inner sphere, ceding ground to the concept of society, which came to describe the fundamental domain of human interdependence. In the new intellectual space created by the Enlightenment, inequality came to be viewed as something artificial and in need of justification, thus demonstrating that the modern concepts of ‘society’ and ‘equality’ hang together in an intellectual movement characterized by thin coherence

Biohajoavan malli-implantin kehitys biofarmaseuttisten aineiden vapautumiselle

Biohajoavien materiaalien tarve ja suosio lääketieteen sovellutuksissa kasvaa jatkuvasti uusien teknologioiden ja tutkimustulosten myötä. Biohajoavan materiaalin etuna on, että sitä ei tarvitse erikseen poistaa elimistöstä sinne asentamisen jälkeen. Tämän opinnäytetyön tarkoituksena oli kehittää mallisysteemi ja mittausmenetelmät malliproteiinin vapautumiselle biohajoavasta materiaalista. Silikasta valmistettiin biohajoava malli-implantti, jonka sisälle kapseloitiin vihreää väriä fluoresoivaa proteiinia, GFP:tä (Green Fluorescent Protein). GFP toimi tutkimuksessa malli-lääkeaineena, jonka vapautumista implantista tutkittiin liuotus- eli dissoluutiotesteillä. Samalla tutkittiin implantin biohajoavuusnopeutta. Opinnäytetyössä valmistettiin sooli-geeli-prosessilla silikaimplantteja, jotka sisälsivät GFP:tä 1 % suhteutettuna silikan massaan implantissa. Implanteille suoritettiin dissoluutiotestejä, joissa ne upotettiin ihmiskehon fysiologisia olosuhteita simuloivaan puskuriin. Silikan in sink –raja optimoitiin 24 h:n kohdalle ja sitä ylläpidettiin liuotuksen aikana vaihtamalla puskuri uuteen vuorokauden välein. Implanttia liuotettiin kerrallaan 4 vuorokautta ja sille määritettiin liukenemisnopeus eri aikapisteistä otetuista näytteistä ja niistä analysoiduista liuotustuloksista. Samalla tutkittiin GFP:n vapautumisnopeutta implantista. Silikan pitoisuutta mitattiin UV-Vis –spektrofotometrillä ja GFP:n aktiivisuutta aikaerotteisella fluoresenssilla. Dissoluutiotesteistä saaduista tuloksista havaittiin, että valmistetut silikaimplantit liukenevat puskuriin kokonaisuudessaan 6-8 vuorokaudessa. Vapautunutta GFP:tä ei pystytty havaitsemaan lainkaan fluoresenssimittauksissa, koska pitoisuus implantissa oli liian pieni. Pystyttiin kuitenkin osoittamaan, että GFP:tä vapautuu käytetyllä menetelmällämitattavissa olevia määriä.The demand for biodegradable materials for use in medical applications is constantly growing due to new studies and advanced technologies. The advantage of biodegradable material is that no removal from the system is needed. The aim of this thesis was to develop a model system and measuring methods for the release of protein from a biodegradable material. A model implant was produced from silica with encapsulated Green Fluorescent Protein. The GFP represented a model biopharmaceutical ingredient, and its release rate from the implant was studied by performing dissolution tests. Also the biodegradability of the implants was examined. Silica-based implants were produced by the sol-gel method. The implants contained 1 % of GFP in proportion to the mass of silica in the implant. Dissolution tests were performed on the implants, which consisted of their immersion in buffer that simulates the physiological conditions of the human body. The in sink conditions of silica were optimized at 24 hours and maintained by changing the buffer every 24 hours. One implant was dissolved for 4 days, and its dissolution rate was determined based on samples taken at different points of time and on the results analyzed. At the same time, the release rate of GFP was examined. The amount of silica was measured by UV-Vis spectrophotometry and the activity of GFP was measured by fluorescence and time-resolved fluorescence. The research discovered that the manufactured silica- implants dissolve completely in 6 to 8 days. The released GFP was not successfully detected in the fluorescence measurements, because it was present in too small an amount. However, it could be proved that GFP is able to be released in amounts that are measurable by the used method

The Colour of Equality : Racial Classification and Natural Equality in Enlightenment Encyclopaedias

While it may seem obvious that human beings should be treated equally before the law and given equal opportunities to succeed, much of recorded history actually demonstrates the exact opposite: hierarchy and innate inequalities were generally seen as both natural and inevitable. It was only during the eighteenth-century Enlightenment that equality was given the benefit of the doubt and inequality came to be seen as something abhorrent and in need of justification. Equality struck a deep emotional chord among an ever-broadening cross-section of European society and would be discussed and debated everywhere from the coffeehouses and the literary salons, to the universities and the scientific academies. Yet, those very thinkers who gave equality its political bite invented a new and powerful discourse of inequality: modern racial classification. Using three major Enlightenment encyclopaedias–Ephraim Chambers’s Cyclopaedia, Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie, and Fortunato Bartolomeo De Felice’s Encyclopédie d’Yverdon–this dissertation places ideas of cross-cultural equality and racial inequality in their historical context to shed light on the nature of the Enlightenment. The philosophes used physical features to categorize humanity into novel ‘racial’ groups in a discourse that was imbued with Eurocentric aesthetic and moral judgments. The growth of race-based slavery in the European colonies of the New World combined with the empiricism of the new science to give physical features an unprecedented importance in the classification of humanity. What is often overlooked in the scholarship on the invention of racial classification, however, is how the race concept fit into a new secular perspective on humanity. I demonstrate that race formed part of the Enlightenment’s engagement with humanity on a new explanatory axis that superseded a parochial religious framework. It was important in Enlightenment life science because it incorporated new understandings of heredity, generation, and deep time into the study of humankind. Many of the very same thinkers who contributed to racial classification also politicized equality by putting it to new uses, such as in a vitriolic denunciation of slavery and inhumane treatment that was grounded in the nascent philosophy of human rights. We find the harshest and most thoroughgoing denunciation of slavery in French thought up to 1765 in Diderot's Encyclopédie, predicated on the idea that all human beings are fundamentally equal to one another. This argument is elaborated and strengthened in the Encyclopédie d'Yverdon. The tension between race and equality in Enlightenment thought can best be explained by the philosophes' attempt to provide a naturalistic account of humanity, in both our physical and moral attributes. In terms of the 'physical,' this meant including the human species in novel natural histories. In terms of the 'moral,' the philosophes sought the origins of human morality outside of scripture, in social experience alone. Rising inequality is one of the most pressing issues of our time and race continues to raise hackles in scientific and popular debates. This dissertation demonstrates that both concepts–equality and race–can best be understood within the framework of the Enlightenment, an intellectual epoch from which we have never really exited