Does Race Continue to Circulate as a Scientific Fact - Article Example

This essay will explore the role of science in using race to explain differences between humans throughout history. More importantly, it focuses on how and why ‘race’ continues to circulate as a scientific fact. This essay will maintain that science has nothing to do with race. In the Middle Ages to be exact, Europe was a place of not much of contact between people from distant places. Christian theology was upheld and ruled over Europe and its scala naturae or Great Chain of Being.

This established that there was hierarchical order in the universe from objects such as metals and rocks being on the bottom and God being on top. The hierarchical organization was in place as reason rule over emotions and king over subjects. "The Chain of Being" illustrates this framework of the medieval and Renaissance as a unified web of superior and less significant associations. Each relation in the Chain was a particular species of being, or object. (Banton, 1998, p.19) Those relations higher on the Chain enjoyed greater intelligence, mobility, and skill compared to those in the lower part on the Chain.

Hence, the higher links had more influence over the lower. For instance, plants were authorized rule over minerals. Being finer in eminence to lifeless rock and soil, the plants possessed a celestial permit to draw nutrition from them, and grow on them. Again the minerals and soil sustained them. Animals placed higher on the Chain of Being were had natural power over both lifeless plants and minerals. For instance, horses could tread on the rocks and soil; they could also devour plants. Human beings were supposed to acquire superior characteristics compared to other animals and could take over the remaining of the natural world, displacing weeds and making gardens, excavating metals and giving them the form of tools.

Similarly, spiritual life forms like angels and God enjoyed greater gift than man and could dominate and be in charge of humanity, the other animals, and the non-living world. The chain is held together by two alternative principles – rational order (as reflected in Ovid’s Metamorphosis) and divine love (as projected in An Essay on Man by Alexander Pope). Every part of the chain is given its responsibility and as long as they all know their position in the chain and are satisfied with it everything works well.