Abstract
With these words Francois Auguste Peron (1807) set his experimental results against the conventional beliefs of the eighteenth century. His ‘actual experiments’ involved the use of a dynamometer to measure loin and hand strength. The dynamometer became the lever to overturn the cherished Enlightenment doctrine of the Noble Savage. Rejecting the long-held assumption of a natural relationship between savagery and strength, Peron claims instead that the state of savagery is inherently a state of feebleness.
I am the first to have opposed actual experiments and numerous facts to an opinion which is too prevalent, perhaps too dangerous and certainly too exclusive, that the physical degeneration of man follows the improvement of civilization.
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Hughes, M. (1990). The Dynamometer and the Diemenese. In: Le Grand, H.E. (eds) Experimental Inquiries. Australasian Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, vol 8. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2057-6_3
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