The Great Debate: Monogenism vs. Polygenism (OLLI)

Across centuries, theologians and philosophers, anthropologists and ethnologists, taxonomists and geneticists, colonizers and abolitionists have taken sides. This five-part course will look at the various ideas about what constitutes a species and the physiologic basis of human difference, and why, from Adam and Eve to modern genomics, human sorting has been an ongoing obsession. Monogenism is the belief that all humans are a single species. People defending both the biblical Genesis story and Darwinian evolution are monogenists. Polygenism is the belief in separate human creations and multiple human species. The first recorded polygenist was Roman Emperor Julian in the 4^th century. In the 1960s, the president of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists proposed separating Black people and White people into separate species. More than a thousand years after the debate began, the question remains: As humans, how do we classify ourselves? Join us for answers.