Chapter 20 Chapter 10 The Social Implications of The Theory of Evolution-2

The environment in which eugenics flourished suggests that eugenics was only an indirect extension of Darwinism.Galton may have warned the world that the looseness of natural selection could lead to the decline of races, while British eugenicists, such as Pearson, have always believed that natural selection is similar to the artificial selection they recommend to people.Galton himself was not a true Darwinian, however, because he insisted that natural evolution occurs through short-term mutations rather than selection on individual differences.Precisely, this was also the position taken by early geneticists.The fact that American eugenicists used Mendelism to show that they viewed human traits fundamentally in terms of heredity, rather than indulging in the idea that human progress could be achieved through selection.In the nature versus nurture debate, eugenicists have clearly sided with innate determinism, that is, the belief in genetic determinism (Cravens, 1978).They are unwilling to pay extra taxes to benefit the poor on the grounds that the poor are unlikely to benefit from improved conditions because their inferiority is genetically determined.Sterilization is a more economical solution, especially as it has been suggested that it can reduce harmful traits in the population.

In the 1930s, the eugenics movement began to decline.Although the extent of its influence is gradually declining, it continues to have an impact.At first glance, the reasons for the decline seem to reveal scientific weaknesses in some of the arguments from the "negative eugenics" standpoint.In the 1920s, it was recognized that describing all unwell traits simply as being caused by a few "bad" genes was a misrepresentation of the real situation.Many traits are influenced by a number of different genes, and the environment can affect the growth of organisms regardless of genetic potential.Population geneticists have also shown that it is very difficult to make appreciable changes in the composition of an entire race.The synthesis of Darwinism and genetics during this period hindered rather than promoted the progress of eugenics.But it is clearly unlikely that these scientific developments were the main cause of the fundamental destruction of the movement.Long before the apparent decline of eugenics, most biologists recognized the true state of affairs.Many of them no longer support eugenics, although a few exceptions simply do not criticize eugenics, leaving some of its advocates to continue to elaborate on that simplistic panacea.Rigorous exploration of the human genome is starting to falter as scientists distance themselves from a controversial issue.Is it just a distaste for public debate?Or fear of confronting a movement that still enjoys widespread support among the public (Ludmerer, 1972; Provine, 1973; Gould, 1974a)?By 1930, the mainstream of eugenics had degenerated into a pseudoscientific game, yet it was only after that that scientists, such as J. B. S. Haldane (Haldane, 1938), began to publicly point out the shortcomings of eugenics .

The real reason for the demise of eugenics is obviously not due to the development of science, but the public's increasing awareness of the dangers of eugenics, especially the impact of the extreme behavior of the German Nazis (Searle, 1979).The behavior of the Nazis showed that totalitarian states that control populations based on racist ideologies create a more threatening totalitarian hazard.This reveals the moral danger of a formally lax eugenics.Initially, it was indeed believed that the state had a duty to restrict the birth of the unfit, and then only for a few obvious types of defects; but the behavior of the Nazis showed that the definition of "unfit" can be broadened to include the entire human race.At this point, attitudes toward compromise began to be reexamined, and eugenics lost support as scientists pointed out to the public that its genetic basis was weak.

Both eugenics and social Darwinism are based on the idea that certain members of society, either race or class, are inherently inferior.Their low social status is due to their inability to function properly in modern society.Therefore, reform of the social structure will not benefit them significantly.The ideology in this view is clear: nature favors those who occupy a superior position, and supports those who find excuses to guard against being stripped of their superiority over the crowd.Reformers, on the other hand, believe that social background and education determine a person's character; that poor people are not genetically left behind, and that if we can improve their conditions, they too can be better people.Because it is difficult to separate nature from nurture, the debate persists to this day.Reforms in recent decades seem to have had little effect, but is this due to lack of reform?Or did those who were offered help fail to benefit (Gould, 1974a)?According to some sociologists, however, both hereditary and environmentalist policies represent different paths toward the same goal.Regardless of whether the unsuitable are eliminated or absorbed into the society, the purpose is still to maintain a social structure in which the professional class serves as the ruling elite (Werskey, 1978).

Neo-Lamarckism and Society Until the early decades of this century, neo-Lamarckism was the obvious rival to heredity in biology before it collapsed.Historians may underestimate the role of neo-Lamarckism in social thought, feeling that it lacks a solid biological foundation.Hofstadter (1959) mentions Lamarckism as an alternative theory in his analysis of Lester Ward's case, while Stocking (1962) argues for the widespread acceptance of Lamarckism in the United States. However, people's research on social Lamarckism obviously cannot be compared with the research on social Darwinism and eugenics.We now recognize the impact of Lamarckism on the biological sciences around 1900, and also recognize the need to take Lamarckism's impact on society more seriously.In addition to Lamarckism being used by Spencer to defend free competition, there has also been a widespread belief that acquired inheritance is sufficient to enable man to undertake his own evolution in a more active manner.Lamarckism became a philosophy that envisioned the future.At the same time, most Lamarckians reject non-white races with such optimism; indeed, their theories underlie the belief that races can be divided into evolutionary ranks.

Although Herbert Spencer is also labeled as a social Darwinist, at least his philosophy of fully advocating individual freedom can be explained from the perspective of Lamarckism.The individualism Spencer espoused was based on the belief that experience is the best teacher and nature the only guide to progress.But for most neo-Lamarckians, social reform and state education would lead the race toward a goal chosen by humanity itself.In practice, however, both positions are conceptually vague.If people learn more efficient behavior (by whatever means), we might think that this behavior can be passed on to the next generation; Is there a logical connection between the genetic process of 〖HTSS〗 learned?Are our children doing things better because we teach them, or because better ways of doing things have been incorporated into their constitution, so they are born with the prerequisites for better behavior?In the former case, there is no difference between the positions of social Lamarckism and heredity, both of which believe that if conditions are better, people will also improve; but if this improvement can have a hereditary effect in the biological sense , we open a new path of social policy based on the hope that the effects of this improvement will accumulate over generations.By shaping human behavior through education, we are in effect controlling the evolution of our species.In the nature-versus-nurture debate, Lamarckians espouse acquired determinism, but they go beyond simply believing that humans are capable of self-improvement. They believe that such improvements can be accumulated through heredity.As a result, this view confuses the distinction between nature and nurture, with the consequence that Lamarckians tend to confuse evolution in the biological sense with evolution in the cultural sense, two quite different processes.

One might object on moral grounds to Spencer's view that nature is the only guide to progress.Those in favor of reform see free competition as merely a new way of maintaining the social status of the elite.Spencer hopes that a perfect society will eventually be built, but along the way, the losers of each generation will have to learn something through pain.Rapid progress was impossible because Spencer believed that evolution was a slow and complex process beyond the control of human forces.His opponents wanted to speed up the process, arguing that if only humans could control the formal education system, the process of evolution could be accelerated.We can choose the direction of our evolution and determine that process by educating our children.Acquired inheritance will ensure that evolutionary effects accumulate in each generation, leading to long-term changes in the human condition.

First, through the socialist Lester Ward's opposition to Sumner's extreme individualism, Lamarckian optimism spread to America, where it became especially popular (Hofstadter, 1959; Scott, 1976).The neo-Lamarckian school of distinctly American character is associated with the work of Joseph LeConte (LeConte, 1899; Stephens, 1976, 1978) and the psychology of G. Stanley Hall (Hall, 1904; Gould, 1977b) have a noticeable effect.All of these men gained prominence at the turn of the twentieth century, with the success of neo-Lamarckism in biology.Their thinking was a direct extension of the authoritative views of those biologists, among them paleontologist Edward Drink Cope.In support of the contention that God's design exists, Cope insists that consciousness is an intrinsic feature of mammals, and that it even directs the evolution of lower organisms (Cope, 1887).Exhausted regressive inheritance gradually develops the capacity for consciousness until it reaches the level of the human mind, at which point it becomes possible to recognize the nature of the process and to control it.Hall's emphasis on the positive role of education in shaping the minds of children is a development of this view, based on the expectation that over a few generations we will see positive improvements in the human condition.People are clearly attracted to the idea of ​​exhausting heredity, and this explains why it survived by the twentieth century, although many scientists had abandoned it.Man is no longer seen as a slave at the mercy of blind mechanical forces, but as a participant in his own rapid evolution.Paul Kammerer (Kammerer, 1924) developed this view while visiting the United States, and articles about the breeding of a new race of superhumans still make the front pages of newspapers.

Those who insist that Lamarckism is the only mechanism in evolution may think that the future development of human beings is an inevitable extension of the natural process.But one should be careful if one admits that selection has played at least some role in evolution.In any case, if selection and exhaustion of regressive inheritance were natural processes, social Darwinism would pass as easily as social Lamarckism.Both Ward and LeConte recognized this, and they insisted that using education to shape the people of the future would mean breaking with nature.They acknowledge that humans have evolved largely by selection in the past, so the reforms they advocate are an effort to move beyond nature's crude and inefficient ways.They also believed, however, that there remained some Lamarckian elements in evolution that could be exploited for the purposeful development of humanity.While the skills and intellectual dispositions acquired by a person in the course of education cannot be inherited, the 〖HTH〗capacity〖HTS S〗 of learning can be improved by exhausting regressive inheritance, thus benefiting the entire race.

Lamarckians are more reckless than Social Darwinists, advocating the notion that nature can be influenced by man's will to improve.Biologists, of course, also fall into this trap, such as Alphonse Packard, who in his professional defense of Lamarckism (Packard, 1894) declared that either Lamarckian theory [HTH] must be [ HTSS〗stands still, or the cumulative development of civilization is impossible.He failed to appreciate that new ideas are passed on to future generations through education, not through inheritance in the biological sense.Even Lester Ward claimed that all our efforts to ensure progress were wasted if Lamarckism was unreasonable—though he should have recognized that there was no logical connection between the two.Perhaps the most striking example of this kind of yearning thinking is the view expressed by George Bernard Shaw in the preface to The Return of Methuselah: If the theory of natural selection is correct, then, "Only fools and knaves survive. ’ This presumptuous assumption that the universe must function in the Lamarckian fashion endorsed by George Bernard Shaw underscored the impetuosity of thought and ultimately discredited the movement as a whole.

Shaw defended Lamarckism as a necessary bulwark against materialist philosophy, a view that is still shared today (Koestler, 1971).In the 1920s, his attempts to reinvigorate Lamarckian theory were utterly futile, since to do so would have required flouting (or ignoring) the reality that Lamarckism was degenerating into a disreputable movement in biology manner.Those, however, who were concerned with the practical problem of social reform, and who adhered to the Lamarckian movement, fully realized that they could no longer count on the inheritance of racial improvement.In fact, the liberalism that flourished in the mid-20th century was based on nothing more than the belief that people could be helped by improving education and living conditions.It might be argued that the Lamarckian notion of racial hereditary progress is an unnecessary hindrance, making helping the poor something we do now—whether it will be beneficial to them in the future—a necessary Logical derivations become blurred.In fact, the Lamarckians obscure what we must be clear about when we attach importance to the moral foundations of reform by assuming that acquired influences can be transformed into innate (hereditary) ones. In any case, even before the biological community finally got rid of Lamarckism, social scientists were against it.During the First World War academic sociologists and anthropologists became increasingly aware of the whole study of evolution. In a famous essay criticizing Ward and others, A. L. Kroeber (1917) accused them of blindly assuming that the changes of nature must conform to human expectations.Kluber proposed that human culture belongs to a unique field of activity, which he called the "superlife" field.Our unique psychological characteristics ensure that our mental processes are independent of the biological evolution that created us in the first place, be it Darwinian or Lamarckian.Because patterns of thought and behavior are transmitted through acquisition and sometimes through biological inheritance, cultural development need not depend on an increase in racial mental power.The implication of this view is that environment and heredity have the same influence on personal qualities.This provides the necessary justification for a policy of social reform.Another equally important feature of the new social sciences was that they also rejected the nineteenth-century assumption that different races could be ranked into stages of human progress. evolution and race Long before Darwin popularized the theory of evolution, there was the notion that races could be divided into classes, with whites as the highest class (Chapter 4).Europeans took it for granted that they were biologically superior to the races they conquered by force.Darwinism also seems to deal with the question of how closely related races are, but in fact it is possible to use Darwin's ideas to express any a priori notions.The survival of the fittest mechanism will be used to justify the subjugation of others by brutal means, showing that extinction is the sign and end of the inferior.No one tried to develop Darwin's tendency to shake the foundation of the chain of linear existence.Evolutionists have often simply accepted the traditional view that the lower races were the intermediate link between the ape and the highest form of man.The contempt of the lower races was seen as a holdover from an early stage of upward progression from the ape.Evolution has been linked to embryology to support this idea of ​​linear development, although this view is more Lamarckian than Darwinian. The global expansion of Europeans brought their peoples into contact with societies that were far less technologically advanced than their own.At first they scorned some primitive people, thinking that they were not much higher than animals, but it was not until the beginning of the nineteenth century that this argument became untenable.If man belongs to one species, and the races are merely regional varieties, some of them may have degenerated by living in unfavorable conditions.This is "monogeneticism," the belief that despite differences among races, humans belong to one species and have a single origin.Some naturalists, however, place too much emphasis on the differences between races, and therefore adopt the "polygenesis" view, which holds that different races have different origins.Luis Agassiz believed that blacks and whites were created as separate types, a view easily accepted by Americans who believed that slavery was the inevitable end of the inferior race. According to the theory of evolution, races can be clearly regarded as varieties of distinguished characters, which have descended from a common ancestor, but have acquired many different characters in the process of later separation.It seems that the races must necessarily be grouped together as one species, since the races are still capable of interbreeding.Nonetheless, hybrid offspring are widely believed to be physically weak, confirming that there has been considerable differentiation between the races.In Germany, Ernst Haeckel claimed that in all other respects, except mutual interbreeding, the races were sufficiently different to be regarded as distinct species.The key question is how far in the past humans began to diverge into different branches.If the common ancestry of all the races is sufficiently remote, it may be said that man has been so differentiated that the differences between the modified forms are so distinct that they can be regarded as true species. Darwinism's deliberate emphasis on struggle also influenced established views of race relations.The idea that blacks are inferior is used to justify enslaving them, but in the case of the American Indians, whites were clearly about eradicating, not just oppressing another race.Darwinism seems to imply that this is an inevitable outcome of the struggle for existence, as the subtitle of the book implies: "Preserving the Beneficial Race in the Struggle for Existence."Throughout history, wherever superior and inferior races have mixed, the superior race has always tried to eliminate the inferior race.Due to the global expansion of Europeans, this struggle also spread throughout the world.In the tropics, [natural] conditions may limit white domination over blacks, but where other inferior races live, whites will take their place as long as whites are habitable too.People once even believed that black people would become extinct in America, because they could only survive under the protection of slavery, and if exposed to open competition, black people would become extinct like the red race. "Survival of the fittest" shows that all of this is the price that progress must pay.In the 20th century, the Nazis took this racial form of Darwinism to its extreme.Aryans were seen as the highest type of human being, destined to rule the world, while other races were scorned as inferior beings who could only be enslaved or exterminated (Tennenbaum, 1956; Poliakov, 1970; Mosse, 1978 ). While both Darwin and Spencer believed that racial struggle had played a role in human evolution, those who supported imperialist policies disapproved of competition between humans within a modern society [HTH] [HTSS].Although Carl Pearson also advertised himself as a socialist, he openly predicted the extinction of the lower races (Pearson, 1894).He therefore believed that a centralized government is necessary if the nation is to win in the struggle for world hegemony (Semmel, 1960).This means that one of the main responsibilities of the state is to maintain the biological level of its people through eugenics.Pearson was particularly concerned about the mixing of races that would result from the migration of inferior people from foreign countries into the developed world.If the Anglo-Saxons were mixed with the blood of their conquerors, it would weaken the strength of the Anglo-Saxons.Pearson studied children living in London slums, and he sought to demonstrate that immigrants were more congenitally handicapped and mentally retarded than native British residents.The immigration phenomenon in the United States is even more serious, and it is similar fears that have identified the most common targets of the eugenics movement.White associations cautioned against the prospect of a rapid increase in "lower" Oriental and Eastern European immigration.In San Francisco, the League for the Exclusion of Asians was formed (Proceedings, 1907-1913), and many independent writers repeated the same view (Schultz, 1908; Grant, 1918; Burr, 1922; Fairchild, 1926; Ross, 1927).Many felt that the exclusion of these reproductively inferior species was more crucial than the elimination of the defective within the white race.Their campaign was ultimately successful, and in 1924 the Immigration Restriction Act was passed. Calls to limit immigration reflect white pessimism about their place in the world.A new generation of racists sees Europeans not as conquerors of the world, but as flowers in a hothouse that may soon be trampled upon by more biologically viable races.The fear of the "yellow peril"—the rapid multiplication of the Chinese—suggests a recognition that, in fact, in the race's struggle for survival, much of the white man's vaunted civilization will not survive.The goal was no longer expansion, but consolidation, to ensure that when Europeans gained a foothold, they were not swallowed up by the identity of their race.This attitude recognizes at least the opposite of what Darwinism really means.In the struggle for existence it is impossible to determine that a certain type is "highest" and in any case absolutely dominates the others.Success is of the type that adapts best and stands out best in new environments, and intelligence may not be the only determining factor.Advocates of racial eugenics, while still convinced of the spiritual and moral superiority of whites, had to face the harshness of the struggle for existence.The Nazis may have had a similar insecurity that they feared a blow in the back from the races they had degraded as inferior, with the dire result that the extermination of other races was no longer done by untrustworthy nature but by By means of the more effective death machine of the state itself. This more pessimistic attitude does not destroy the traditional belief that, from a moral point of view, the white race is the highest product of human evolution.Although Darwin emphasized that development was a branching process rather than a linear process, most of those who followed him still believed that human evolution was a linear upward process from apes.An idea developed in the eighteenth century and still in vogue in the early nineteenth century (see Chapter 4; Priest, 1843) held that "inferior" races might belong to intermediate stages in this chain of existence.The new science of anthropology ranks societies in a natural hierarchy from the most primitive to the most civilized.Burrow (1966) suggested that long before the emergence of the biological theory of evolution, there was a view of evolution in which society progressed along a hierarchical sequence.The theory of social evolution leaves an unresolved question: Why do some races retain their early social forms until now?As Wallace and Argyle have shown (see Chapter 8), there is no need to link social development with the biological improvement of human nature.One answer is that impoverished environments lead to underutilization of human potential in some races, but the prevailing belief that there are biological differences between races offers a more comprehensive approach to the problem. way of allure. The system of cosmic evolution proposed in the late 19th century saw biological and social progress as integral aspects of the same phenomenon.The technological backwardness of non-European societies shows their cultural inferiority, which in turn can be used to justify the biological inferiority of other races.Since different societies and races can be arranged in linear sequences of varying degrees of perfection, it is natural to link the two sequences by thinking of cultural development as a manifestation of biological progress; non-European races have not yet developed Developing the corresponding intelligence to make their own organization more efficient, they remain stagnant at the lower levels of social development.The inferior races in modern society can be considered to be equivalent to the early stages in the evolutionary process of the white race.Caucasians developed further because the challenging Nordic environment stimulated their evolutionary development.The debilitating environment of the tropics, on the contrary, hindered the progress of the races that lived there.These unfortunate beings have been linked to a past evolutionary stage of the Caucasian race, living fossils closer in mind and body to the apes. The idea that individual races occupy different positions on a linear hierarchy of progression fits best with the form of evolution advocated by recurring theories.Lamarckians in particular believed that evolution was a linear process, reflected in the directed development of the embryo (Chapter 9; Gould, 1977b).While Darwinism was advocating the concept of cladistic evolution, many neo-Lamarckians believed that each group evolved toward a predetermined goal according to a linear picture; subsequent stages were added through the process of embryonic development.It is believed that different modern types may occupy different positions in the same hierarchical order.If this thought is applied to explain the origin of man, then it can be said that there has been a hierarchy from the ape to the highest race of man; the inferior races remain in the lower stages of progress.The lower races did not go through all the stages to reach the highest form, failed to increase the stages of their development, and retained until now child-like (or ape-like) traits. G. Stanley Hall believed that the lower races were like children who did not grow up (Muschinske, 1977), and many Lamarckists looked for ape-like traits in the minds and bodies of the lower races. This view is not limited to addressing issues of race.The Italian C. Lombroso created a science of "criminal anthropology" according to which criminal types are seen as regressing to earlier stages of evolution due to failure to develop further (Nye, 1976) .Some people even think that women are still at a lower stage of male development.But the linear evolutionary model of Lamarckism is most widely applied in the field of race.Some Neo-Lamarckians in the United States, such as E. D. Cope (Cope, 1887), listed a large number of characteristics to explain the "arrested development" of the black race (JS Haller, 1975).The German Haeckel also followed the same line of thought (Gasman, 1971).Haeckel was a leader in proponents of reenactmentism and the concept of linear evolution.Although he uses Darwinism to explain the struggle between races, he also uses Lamarckism to explain the origin of new racial traits.Through his writings, the hierarchical explanation of human origin slowly became a universal view of evolution in the 19th century.If there is any biological theoretical basis for the later Nazis to denigrate other races as inferior people, it is Haeckel's idealism to transform Lamarckism and Darwinism. Figure 23. Race in the Darwin and Lamarck argument The figure depicts two possible relationships between different races, the left figure corresponds to Darwin's argument, and the right figure corresponds to Lamarck's argument.Darwin's concept of evolution is branched evolution: races are completely different, and cannot be classified according to the distance of mutual relationship, and some races cannot be considered to be closer to apes.In another system, the evolution of superlative man is seen as a linear process repeated in the growth of the modern embryo due to acquired inheritance.This process, like the development of an embryo, is directional.For some reasons, some human variants cannot climb to the next evolutionary stage, cannot catch up with the pace of evolution, and thus remain in an intermediate stage of the evolutionary process.Therefore, there is no real branching evolution, but only a series of parallel lines, which represent the continuation of ancient types to modern types, and some modern races correspond to various types in the hierarchical sequence from ape to man. Lamarckism has the ability to downplay some of the worst aspects of race theory.On the one hand, Lamarckism does not shake the sense of European superiority; on the other hand, it makes it possible for other races, through the cumulative effect of education and better conditions, to eventually rise to the same level [as the Caucasians].This potential of Lamarckism can be seen in F. J. Turner's "frontier hypothesis" of American development (Coleman, 1966).According to Turner, no matter where the pioneers came from, the stimulating environment of the frontier directly affected the physical composition of the pioneers, resulting in a stronger human race.Once the same principles were used to account for races elsewhere in the world, it was suggested that improved conditions would lead to similar biological advances.Paul Kamal, who discredited Lamarckism with his involvement in the midwife-frog incident, did offer hope for the progress of all races of humanity.Most Lamarckians, however, considered this impossible, arguing that the inferior races had lived in bad conditions for too long and that there would be no appreciable improvement in these races in the near future.British embryologist E. W. MacBride endorsed Kamal's Lamarckism, but advocated an extreme form of eugenics aimed at sterilizing "inferior" members of the Irish race (MacBride , 1924; Bowler, 1984).Whether or not the Lamarckists were optimistic about the prospects for the development of the Caucasian race, they were still constrained by the limitations of their time to give another interpretation of their theory and deny that the development of other races also has such prospects. The bankruptcy of racial evolution was not because it failed to be scientifically proven, but because social science in the early 20th century rejected the whole idea of ​​evolution (Harris, 1968; Hatch, 1973; Cravens, 1978).In Europe, Max Weber and Emile Dukheim first treated each society or culture as a functional whole and believed that it could not be judged by the markers of any other society.One abandons the assumption that all behavior must have a rational basis (or at least a rational basis at a more primitive social level) on which to divide all societies into hierarchies, with Europeans or Americans at the top.Franz Boas and his students introduced a similar cultural relativism to American anthropology.If society cannot be arranged in grades of varying degrees of perfection, there is no reason to assume that other races are biologically inferior and cannot develop along the lines of Europeans.These differences can be explained on the basis of cultural forces alone; and, as AL Kroeber asserts in his essay on "superorganisms" (Kroeber, 1917), these forces have nothing to do with differences in the biological sense.What modern social science has turned its back on is not only the hierarchical division of race and culture, but also the idea of ​​biological evolution as an account of cultural development (Greenwood, 1984).If the concept of evolution is still used, it also means that the process of cultural development is not guided by biological processes (Ingold, 1987).In fact, the social sciences have turned their backs on biology to such an extent that when modern biologists reemerged to assess human behaviour, a violent debate broke out, such as the sociobiological debate (10 A chapter).