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February 12, 2007
Happy Darwin Day..
STRIKE UP THE BAND! Around the world today, February 12, admirers of Charles Darwin will celebrate the great man's 198th birthday with lectures, concerts, and exhibits.
Darwin Day, as it's called, is meant to be cheerful, with a bit of good-natured triumphalism, marking what celebrants see as the intellectual victory of Darwinism, the theory of evolution by the purely material mechanism of natural selection. But set aside the scientific legacy for a moment to consider the less frequently discussed question of Darwin's moral heritage. This year happens to mark another anniversary as well: a tragic one, strongly linked to Darwinian theory.
As of 2007, it is exactly a century since the key turning point in the Darwin-inspired American eugenic movement. In 1907, the state of Indiana achieved the distinction of becoming the world's first government entity to enforce sterilization of institutionalized "idiots," "imbeciles," and other individuals deemed genetically "unfit." The idea caught on.
With Washington and California following in 1909, some 30 states eventually passed similar compulsory sterilization laws by the early 1930s. California was the leader in the field, accounting for half of the coercive sterilizations in the years leading up to World War I.
snip
That eugenics traced its origins to Darwin was no secret. A leading scientific eugenicist, the Harvard genetic biologist Edward East, explained in 1927 that "eugenic tenets are strict corollaries" of the "theory of organic evolution."
It was a reasonable inference. In his Origin of Species in 1859, Darwin described the "one general law, leading to the advancement of all organic beings, namely, multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die."
His more specific thoughts on human society were saved for his other major work, the Descent of Man (1871):
With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment . . .
Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man.
Darwin himself opposed discriminating against the weak and helpless, but his disciples were less principled. The major ethical impact of the Darwinian idea has been to undercut what contemporary Princeton bio-ethicist Peter Singer decries as the "Hebrew view" of a purposefully-designed humanity, crowned by the solemn and central theme: "And God said, Let us make man in our image."
Posted by Amy Welborn | Permalink
Comments
I'd rather celebrate Lincoln's birthday!
Posted by: Sidney at Feb 12, 2007 10:34:46 AM
What is so ironic about the eugenics movement is that the true effectiveness of its self-proclaimed higher rational order would/could never have been realized by the egg-heads except through coercion championed by the lower passions. The pristine numbers of eugenic planning and programs in the theories of Karl Pearson, Francis Galton, Charles Davenport et al, found its biggest practical application in the base hatred of Heinrich Himmler. The sterile scientific attitude towards controlled reproduction would have had a much more difficult time pushing artificial contraception into popular acceptance were it not for the perverse sexual self-worshiping religion of Margaret Sanger.
The marriage of Sanger's passionate deviancy with the cold, detached capitalism of the Rockefellers and their ilk was certainly ironic, but not a complete surprise. The fervor with which both types worshipped their idols, demanded that they seek out and squash all obstacles. And when Sanger's chocolate fell into the paranoid capitalists' peanut butter...
*POOF*
The modern world was born.
Posted by: caine at Feb 12, 2007 10:50:19 AM
It is interesting the way God puts together the feast of Out Lady of Lourdes and the rememberance of Darwin. They represent 2 very different views of the sick and disabled amoung us. God gives us what we need often before we need it. We needed a reminder that these less fortunate amoung us are not mistakes to be discarded so we can improve future generations but rather a calling to improve our own souls in a way that natural selection could never achieve.
Posted by: Randy at Feb 12, 2007 10:53:07 AM
I'm just dealing with my new found knowlege that the state I live in was the first gov'mnt to enforce eugenics and sterilization. I guess it goes with our Clan Heritge though.
Actually, after an upbringing in Hoosier Farm country, I'm not even suprized.
Posted by: Ignorant Redneck at Feb 12, 2007 11:32:54 AM
Which "gospel" do we choose?
The gospel of "the survival of the fittest" or the Gospel of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ?
Pope Benedict at his 'inaugural Mass' said,
"Today the Church and the successors of the Apostles are told to put out into the deep of history and to let down the nets so as to win men and women over to the Gospel-to God, to Christ and to true life.....For a fish created for water, it is fatal to be taken out of the sea, to be removed from its vital element to serve as human food. But in the mission of the fishers of men the reverse is true. We are living in alienation, in the salt waters of suffering amd death; in a sea of darkness without light. The net of the Gospel pulls us out of the waters of suffering and death and brings us into the splendor of God's light, into true life. It is really true: as we folow Christ in His mission to be fishers of men, we must bring men and women out of the sea that is salted with so many forms of alienation and into the land of life, into the light of God.
It is really so: the purpose of our lives is to reveal God to men. And only where God is seen does life truly begin.
Only when we meet the living God in Christ do we know what life is.
We are not some casual and meaningless
product of evolution.
Each of us is the result of a thought
of God.
Each of us is willed, each of us is loved,
each of us is necessary.
There is nothing more beautiful than to be surprised by the Gospel, by the encounter with Christ. There is nothing more beautiful than to know Him amdto speak to others of our friendship with Him......"
Posted by: Father Elijah at Feb 12, 2007 11:33:30 AM
Have been looking for the one book to learn about U.S. history on this. Would especially appreciate quotes from leaders, secular and religious.
Any leads?
Posted by: Mary, the doctor at Feb 12, 2007 12:03:47 PM
"Darwin himself opposed discriminating against the weak and helpless, but his disciples were less principled."
Sort of like Jesus and the Inquisition, I suppose.
I can appreciate the scientific contribution of Darwin, but I'm inclined to be with Sidney on this one.
Posted by: Todd at Feb 12, 2007 12:30:05 PM
As Todd (somewhat) implies, blaming Darwin for eugenics is somewhat like blaming Jesus for the Inquisition.
I suppose we could toss out Darwin and his theories, and, of course, the better scientific understanding of the world, and the vast medical improvements that the theory of evolution by means of natural selection gives us.
Of course, we could separate the moral implications of those theories from their scientific meaning, but I suppose it's much more satisfying to condemn everything than to use a discriminating judgment.
Posted by: Peter Parley at Feb 12, 2007 12:53:08 PM
Who's condemning everything? Peter, your response is the kind of "all or nothing" or "Shhhh, don't talk about it in front of the children" attitude that renders intelligent discourse quite difficult. Why not deal with the issue of eugenics directly instead of (of course) trying to change the subject?
An interesting book is Preaching Eugenics: Religious Leaders and the American Eugenics Movement.
Posted by: ellen at Feb 12, 2007 12:59:46 PM
Klinghoffer is on the payroll of the Dishonesty--er, Discovery Institute. I wonder if that's why I have trouble taking this seriously.
Posted by: John Farrell at Feb 12, 2007 1:01:37 PM
"I'm just dealing with my new found knowlege that the state I live in was the first gov'mnt to enforce eugenics and sterilization."
They were also in inspiration for concentration camps: the federal treatment of the Cherokee and other nations and the institution of the Reservation system. One might say that at least Hitler used trains and spared the Jews a forced march halfway across the country.
Reasonable people can manage to separate the initial idea (evolution or the Gospel) and the person who reveals the idea (Darwin or Jesus) from those who would pervert the notion and send it in an entirely different direction. I have to agree with John on this one: why are we even bothering to discuss a puff piece like this from Klinghoffer?
Posted by: Todd at Feb 12, 2007 1:46:01 PM
Darwin's book, "The Descent of Man", seems almost prophetic in its title. What, indeed,
have descended into ?
Posted by: Ed at Feb 12, 2007 1:56:23 PM
There's a good book I used in grad school called The Legacy of Malthus, by Allan Chase. It gives a comprehensive and somewhat angry overview of the racism and elitism that has fed eugenic dreams among our betters.
Social Darwinism in American Thought by Richard Hofstedter gives a good overview of how American academia went from the biology of evolution to imagining its practical applications.
The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism by Stefan Kuhl is a critically accepted historical indictment of how Germany merely served as the testing ground for eugenic ideas promulgated in the UK and the US.
And, finally I recommend reading Sanger's Pivot of Civilization for the pure jaw-dropping experience! The fact that they still REPRINT this book shows how little the (insert descriptive "-ist" word here) in our society fear anyone turning the light on them any more.
Posted by: caine at Feb 12, 2007 2:04:44 PM
How about celebrating Darwinian Social Theory that was used as the scientific basis for the oppression and subjugation of the "black race" (among others)??
Posted by: Philip at Feb 12, 2007 2:08:38 PM
"They were also in inspiration for concentration camps"
Oh, is that where the British learned it?
As awful as the genocidal treatment of the American Indians is, and as awful as the reservation system is, it's amazingly incorrect to see that as the inspiration for the Nazi concentration camps.
As for the link between Darwinism and eugenics, the link between them has long been historically verified. Also, sorry to break the bad new to you, Darwinists, but eugenics is not a perversion or misapplication of Darwinist principles, but flows logically and necessarily from them. But then Darwin's Descent of Man is filled with racism, which was regarded as scientific and respectable back then. I recall reading in Descent of Man how terrible war is, not because killing people is bad, but because, Darwin said, war kills the men who should be spreading their genes, leaving only the inferior men to mate and breed. There you have it -- eugenics, right from Darwin's own pen.
Mind you, I don't have my Darwin handy right now, but tonight I'll get it out and post the quote from Descent of Man that I'm talking about.
Posted by: Jordan Potter at Feb 12, 2007 2:10:12 PM
"I suppose we could toss out Darwin and his theories, and, of course, the better scientific understanding of the world, and the vast medical improvements that the theory of evolution by means of natural selection gives us."
We've gotten those improvements in spite of Darwinian pseudoscience, not because of it.
Posted by: Jordan Potter at Feb 12, 2007 2:15:56 PM
I suppose we could toss out Darwin and his theories, and, of course, the better scientific understanding of the world, and the vast medical improvements that the theory of evolution by means of natural selection gives us.
Huh? What exactly did Darwin contribute that has lead to vast medical improvements (non-eugenic ones, I mean)? The medical improvements have far more to do with the application of the scientific method, and trial and error - nothing to do with Darwin.
Posted by: c matt at Feb 12, 2007 3:10:23 PM
Go no further than Nobel prize-winning economist Gary Becker and his blog entry today to find a perfectly libertarian take on this topic:
"Is Sex Selection of Births Undesirable?"
http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/index.html
(Spoiler) He says "no." See, you're smarter than a Nobel laureate!
Posted by: J. Christian at Feb 12, 2007 3:32:24 PM
"They were also in inspiration for concentration camps: the federal treatment of the Cherokee and other nations and the institution of the Reservation system. One might say that at least Hitler used trains and spared the Jews a forced march halfway across the country."
Hogwash! I'm part Cherokee, and comparing what Jackson did to the Cherokees, bad as it was, with what Hitler did to the Jews is an obscenity.
Posted by: Donald R. McClarey at Feb 12, 2007 4:07:48 PM
Donald, no; the mistreatment of human beings, both the Cherokees and Jews, was an obscenity. I'm merely pointing it out. Buck up, my friend, and take it like a man.
Posted by: Todd at Feb 12, 2007 4:17:03 PM
Jordan,
I don't think Darwin talked much about the spreading of genes given that he had no knowledge of Mendel's work. I've heard that he had some articles of Mendel's but that they remained uncut and unread in his library or that Mendel's work never even reached that far into his ambit. Still, I get what you mean, I think.
Posted by: Aumgn at Feb 12, 2007 4:26:39 PM
Todd, you didn't just point out that our treatment of the Cherokees and Hitler's treatment of the Jews are both obscenities. You compared them by making the point that the latter was in some way less an obscenity than the former. Don did not suggest that either was somehow morally acceptable, he just took issue with the nature of your comparison. If you disagree, then argue the merits, but you shouldn't twist your own words in order to rebut his.
Posted by: Mike Petrik at Feb 12, 2007 4:46:30 PM
"I don't think Darwin talked much about the spreading of genes given that he had no knowledge of Mendel's work."
Correct. I was "translating" the thought into the language of post-Darwinian genetics, since I didn't have the actual quote handy.
Posted by: Jordan Potter at Feb 12, 2007 5:03:18 PM
"Buck up, my friend, and take it like a man."
Todd, you have an unerring talent to miss the point. Comparing the expulsion of the Cherokees to the Holocaust is the issue as Mike noted. Do your really wish to defend the comparison, or did you thoughtlessly do it in your eagerness to bash your country?
Posted by: Donald R. McClarey at Feb 12, 2007 5:18:40 PM
I'm with Sidney -- it's Old Abe the Rail-Splitter for me, any time!
Posted by: chloesmom at Feb 12, 2007 5:56:42 PM
