THREE CENTURIES' PERSPECTIVES
bach's observations or theorizing, but only represents, as Blumen-
bach readily admits, the classification adopted and promoted by his
guru Carolus Linnaeus in the founding document of taxonomy, the
Systema naturae of 1758. Therefore, the later addition of a "Malay
variety" for some Pacific peoples originally included in a broader
Asian group, represents Blumenbach's only original contribution to
racial classification. This change seems so minor. Why, then, do we
credit Blumenbach, rather than Linnaeus, as the founder of racial
classification? (One might prefer to say "discredit," as the enterprise
does not, for good reason, enjoy high repute these days.) I wish to
argue that Blumenbach's apparently small change actually records
a theoretical shift that could not have been broader, or more por-
tentous, in scope. This change has been missed or misconstrued in
most commentaries because later scientists have not grasped the
vital historical and philosophical principle that theories are models
subject to visual representation, usually in clearly definable geomet-
ric terms.
By moving from the Linnaean four-race system to his own five-
race scheme, Blumenbach radically changed the geometry of hu-
man order from a geographically based model without explicit
ranking to a double hierarchy of worth, oddly based upon perceived
beauty and fanning out in two directions from a Caucasian ideal.
The addition of a Malay category, as we shall see, was crucial to
this geometric reformulation—and Blumenbach's "minor" change
between 1775 and 1795 therefore becomes the key to a conceptual
transformation rather than a simple refinement of factual informa-
tion within an old scheme. (For the insight that scientific revolutions
embody such geometric shifts, I am grateful to my wife, Rhonda
Roland Shearer, who portrays these themes in her sculptures and
in her forthcoming book, The Flatland Hypothesis, named for Abbott's
great science fiction work of 1884 on the limitations imposed by
geometry upon our general thoughts and social theories.)
Blumenbach idolized his teacher Linnaeus. On the first page of
the 1795 edition of his racial classification, Blumenbach hailed "the
immortal Linnaeus, a man quite created for investigating the char-
acteristics of the works of nature, and arranging them in systematic
order." Blumenbach also acknowledged Linnaeus as the source of
his original fourfold classification: "I have followed Linnaeus in the
number, but have defined my varieties by other boundaries" (177 5