Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

How science has shifted our sense of identity

Biological advances have repeatedly changed who we think we are, writes Nathaniel Comfort, in the third essay of a series marking Nature’s anniversary on how the past 150 years have shaped science today.
  1. Nathaniel Comfort

    1. Nathaniel Comfort is Professor of the History of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

Illustration by Señor Salme

In the iconic frontispiece to Thomas Henry Huxley’s Evidence as to Man’s Place in Nature (1863), primate skeletons march across the page and, presumably, into the future: “Gibbon, Orang, Chimpanzee, Gorilla, Man.” Fresh evidence from anatomy and palaeontology had made humans’ place on the scala naturae scientifically irrefutable. We were unequivocally with the animals — albeit at the head of the line.

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Get just this article for as long as you need it

$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Nature 574, 167-170 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-03014-4

Updates & Corrections

  • Correction 14 October 2019: The article has been updated to clarify that Alfred Binet’s words originally appeared in the book Les enfants anormaux in 1907. The date of 1914 given in the earlier version was for the English translation.

References

  1. H. [Huxley, T. H.] Nature 1, 183–184 (1869).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Binet, A. & Simon, T. Mentally Defective Children (Arnold, 1914).

    Google Scholar 

  3. Anderson, W. Isis 105, 606–616 (2014).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  4. Burnet, M. Sci. Am. 191, 74–78 (1954).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Garrod, A. E. Lancet 160, 1616–1620 (1902).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Sender, R., Fuchs, S. & Milo, R. Cell 164, 337–340 (2016).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  7. Ross, A. A., Doxey, A. C. & Neufeld, J. D. mSystems 2, e00043-17 (2017).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Download references

Subjects

Latest on:

Nature Careers

Jobs

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing

Search

Advanced search

Quick links