Sir Arthur Keith FRS FRAI was a British anatomist and anthropologist, and a proponent of scientific racism.
23 Facts About Arthur Keith
2.
Arthur Keith was a fellow and later the Hunterian Professor and conservator of the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.
3.
Arthur Keith was a strong proponent of Piltdown Man, but finally conceded it to be a forgery shortly before his death.
4.
Where others had postulated that physical separation could provide a barrier to interbreeding, allowing groups to evolve along different lines, Keith introduced the idea of cultural differences as providing a mental barrier, emphasising territorial behaviour, and the concept of the 'in-group' and 'out-group'.
5.
Arthur Keith is famous for discovering the sinoatrial node, the component of the heart which makes it beat, with his student Martin Flack in 1906.
6.
Arthur Keith was born at Quarry Farm near Old Machar in Aberdeenshire, the son of John Keith, a farmer, and his wife, Jessie Macpherson.
7.
Arthur Keith obtained a Bachelor of Medicine at the University of Aberdeen in 1888.
8.
Arthur Keith travelled to Siam on a gold mining trip in 1889 where he gathered plants for Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in London in his capacity as a plant collector assistant for the Botanical Survey of the Malay Peninsula.
9.
On returning to Britain in 1892, Arthur Keith studied anatomy at University College London and at the University of Aberdeen.
10.
Arthur Keith studied primate skulls, and in 1897 he published An Introduction to the Study of Anthropoid Apes.
11.
Arthur Keith was editor of the Journal of Anatomy between 1915 and 1936 and elected President of the Anatomical Society of Great Britain and Ireland for 1918 to 1920.
12.
Arthur Keith gave the 1927 presidential address to the British Association meeting in Leeds.
13.
Arthur Keith was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1913.
14.
Arthur Keith was knighted in 1921, and he published New Discoveries in 1931.
15.
Arthur Keith died at his home in Downe, Kent on 7 January 1955.
16.
In conjunction with his Eurocentric view on human evolution in Europe as being separate from Africa, Arthur Keith shared scientific racist views with a number of other intellectuals and writers during the 1920s, often based on Galtonism and the belief that opposition to cross-breeding in animals could be applied to miscegenation.
17.
Arthur Keith cites Adam Smith, the theoretical father of capitalism, who in his 'The Theory of Moral Sentiments' regarded prejudices as part of human nature, to both preserve human life and for the welfare of the common good.
18.
Arthur Keith concludes that the idea that prejudices "are not artificially acquired, but have been grafted deeply into our natures for particular purposes" is not merely a discovery of Darwinism.
19.
Arthur Keith went to live in a house very close to that which Darwin had occupied in Downe, Kent, in the latter years of his life, and took a great interest in trying to understand more about Charles Darwin.
20.
Arthur Keith who feels generous towards his enemy, and more especially if he feels forgiveness towards him, has in reality abandoned the code of enmity and so has given up his place in the turmoil of evolutionary competition.
21.
Arthur Keith has failed, not because the theory of evolution is false, but because he has made three fatal blunders in its application.
22.
Arthur Keith died in 1955, some four years before the 100th anniversary of Darwin's work, so that he was clearly not available to write an introduction for the centennial edition.
23.
Furthermore, while Arthur Keith did write an introduction to earlier printings of Origin of Species, in use from 1928 to 1958, the words given above do not appear in that introduction.