Monboddo's 'Ugly Tail' and the Enlightenment Orangutan

The erudite James Burnet, Lord Monboddo (1714–1799), member of the Select Society and judge of the Court of Session in Edinburgh, wrote many pages about the existence of ‘men with tails’ and orangutans’ humanity. For this reason, he has been labelled as ‘credulous’, ‘bizarre’ and ‘eccentric’ both by his contemporaries and by modern scholars. This presentation takes his argument seriously to show that throughout his work Monboddo searched for evidence. If his belief in mermaids, giants, blemmyes, daemons and oracles was far from reflecting the general attitude of the age of Enlightenment and empiricism, Monboddo contributed to place the ‘science of man’ at the center of the map of knowledge.  In this Enlightenment 'science of man,’ the orangutan played a key role.

Silvia Sebastiani (Directrice d’études, Ecoles des hautes études en sciences sociales & Kratter Visiting Professor, History Department, Stanford) is a specialist in the Scottish Enlightenment and studies the entangled networks of animals, slaves and material goods in the eighteenth century, exploring how they activated scientific, philosophical, political and legal debates that re-framed the Enlightenment sciences of humanity.  She is the author of The Scottish Enlightenment: Race, Gender, and the Limits of Progress and is working on a project on the boundaries of humanity.