Charles Darwin’s tragic error: Hitler, evolution, racism and the Holocaust

[xchrom]

http://www.salon.com/2014/04/19/charles_darwins_tragic_error_hitler_evolution_racism_and_the_holocaust/



“In general, the brain is larger in mature adults than in the elderly, in men than in women, in eminent men than in men of mediocre talent, in superior races than in inferior races.” —Anthropologist Paul Broca in 1861

Today the word “racism” means dislike for people whose skin is colored differently from ours, usually paired with the suspicion that they are not as intelligent or morally upright as we are. Yet during the years between about 1890 and 1960, and especially in the 1930s and 1940s, racism meant a great deal more. During those years most educated people in Europe and North America believed that racial differences in intelligence and morality were proven scientific fact. Today racism is seen as the kneejerk reflex of the uneducated and socially marginal, of “losers.” In Hitler’s day it was instead a conviction shared by most of society’s leaders, and by millions of people who ranked below them.

Sometimes, but hardly always, racist belief flowed from some understanding of genetics, of the way that people can inherit physical and mental traits from their parents. Racism usually contained the notion that different races, different nationalities, and also specific classes of society, were born to behave in certain ways. Not only were people of African or Asian descent assumed to naturally act differently from white people, but even different white nationalities—Scotch, Swedes, Greeks, or Poles—were described as having different inborn traits. The poorer classes of every society were also said to have been born with inferior moral and intellectual qualities that kept them at the bottom of the social ladder.

Throughout history and also today, inequality has marked the human condition and the powerful have abused their power. Some countries are militarily stronger than others, the wealthy often monopolize the political process, and infants enter the world with drastically unequal life chances. The Western racism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries gave the actions of social elites and mighty nations some new and dangerous qualities. Men who started wars, persecuted minorities, or murdered civilians gained a new confidence in the rightness of their actions. Their deeds, no matter how violent, now escaped moral condemnation, because their actions supposedly reflected “the laws of nature,” and the natural world, the animal kingdom, knows no morality. Because the new racism enjoyed the tremendous prestige of scientific certainty, it was intellectually respectable. Finally, most human beings were now thought to be prisoners of their heredity, born to act the way they did, unable to change their own behavior even if they wanted to. No amount of education or political pressure could improve a race or nationality; if the behavior of a particular group was considered harmful, its members might therefore have to be eliminated.

Modern racism had several different intellectual sources, and only with difficulty could one say which of these was most important. I will focus here on the “scientific” strand of racism, which drew its inspiration from Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution through natural selection. Several factors dictate this emphasis on Darwinian racism. First, Darwinist racism explicitly motivated Hitler and many other leading perpetrators of the Holocaust. Second, Darwin inspired the researchers, most notably in biology and anthropology, who gave racism its aura of scientific certainty. Third, Darwinian thought may well have been more popular in Germany than anywhere else during these years, in part because Germany was the world’s leading center of biological research before World War I and the Germans were exceptionally literate. Finally, Darwinist racism was the brand of racism most easily understood by the widest number of people, in part because Darwin’s theory was astonishingly simple and easy to explain.

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. Nothing about an error by Darwin in the article - it's click bait

On the guidelines for books to be banned in Nazi Germany:

6. Writings of a philosophical and social nature whose content deals with the false scientific enlightenment of primitive Darwinism and Monism (Haeckel).

http://www.library.arizona.edu/exhibits/burnedbooks/documents.htm

[Orrex]

5. ^^That.

[MH1]

2. Could you highlight the part where it was DARWIN'S error??

I skimmed your excerpt and didn't find it. It seems that it was what other people did with Darwin's research that caused the problem.

Normally I would go to the link for myself, but this is clothed as sensationalist, creationism-supporting tripe, so I don't want to give it clicks. Even though it's from Salon, where I wouldn't normally expect to find the crap that this looks like.

The conclusion implied by your excerpt is that no one should risk doing or publishing scientific investigation that just might be used by other people to do horribly, incredibly immoral, cruel, evil things.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

3. As a person of (growing) faith I do not hold Darwin to account for these tragedies.

If it is one thing my faith has taught me it is the fact that people will twist, distort, mutilate and corrupt everything they can get a hold of in order to advance their fallen desires.

[SidDithers]

4. Written by someone...

who really doesn't understand evolution through natural selection.

Sid

[gollygee]

6. Evopsych fans need to read about this other misuse of the theory of evolution

Covering your biases in scientific terms doesn't make them scientific.

[boston bean]

7. yeah, that is my take away too.

Doesn't mean that someone is anti evolution, or a right wing nut job.

But Hitler did in fact use natural selection (a Darwin theory) to pidgeon hole groups of people he felt inferior by perverting biological evolution.

[xchrom]

8. it's just a 'trying' to point out how

evolution got mixed up with the what was going on at the time.

[boston bean]

9. Ayup! people can be touchy sometimes.

[rrneck]

16. Which parts of evolutionary psycology misuse the theory of evolution?

If you can think of a specific research objective or, even better, researcher I'd appreciate it.

[boston bean]

17. I'm going to go off and spend some time with the family, but wanted to share this with you.

[rrneck]

19. Nice graphic.

When you have some thoughts of your own I'd like to hear them.

[jwirr]

20. Would the Eugenics movement in the USA before Hitler be a good example of misuse of the theory?

Read Edwin Black "War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race". My family were victims of this war against the weak.

One question I have: Did Darwin ever say that natural selection pertained to human beings? Or that it should? Was his theory taken and used by others to say human beings did?

[rrneck]

24. I don't think it's related to eugenics.

Last edited Sun Apr 20, 2014, 02:23 PM - Edit history (1)

I've only read a few books on the subject, and the discipline appears to be in it's arrested infancy. It looks like it got a bad rap in the seventies when Edward O. Wilson published Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, which is part of his thinking about consillence and the unity of knowledge. At the time sociobioligy was accused of being something akin to social darwinism and eugenics, although I don't think that's the case. I think he ran into trouble with a political zeitgeist that asserted that the bulk of human behavior is defined by nurture.

I can't produce a quote but he was dubious about saying that since prevailing religious ideology would have excoriated him for it. He eventually address those issues in The Descent of Man. I haven't read it.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

35. shouldn't that be The Desecent of Man

it would be decent of you to rectify if it is ...

[edhopper]

10. This is like saying

Deepak Chopra's garbage about quantum mechanics and spiritualism is Niels Bohr's error.

[Shivering Jemmy]

11. So what mistake did Darwin make again?

Stupid title.

[Archae]

12. Nazis perverted everything they touched.

Including Darwin.

They could have had a crowning achievement in one field, a group of engineers and scientists developed the most advanced rocket in the world up to that time.

What did Hitler do with it?

Make any scientific breakthroughs in upper-atmosphere research?

No.

Made it into a terrorist weapon.

[rafeh1]

13. theory of evolution had 3 legs

1. National evolution. Nations evolved and survival of the fittest applied to nations. Stronger nations taking over weaker ones is natures way. Adolf Hitler destroyed this leg.

2. Social evolution. In society some are healthy strong and smart. They gravitate to the top while the weak feeble minded go to the bottom. This leg was common even before darwin published theoryof evolution. Charles Dickens did major damage to this leg with his book a Christmas carol..

3. Biological evolution. Still going strong. .

[Crunchy Frog]

18. "Theory of evolution" as a scientific term

only refers to #3. As far as I know, that was the only one that was a focus of Darwin's research and writings.

And even individuals "evolve" over the course of their lives. Doesn't mean it's a part of evolutionary theory.

[Adrahil]

14. I hate articles like this.

Darwin didn't invent Natural Selection, he discovered it. It exists quite independently of Darwin.

[Wounded Bear]

15. Well, yeah, political figures distorted the actual science for their own ends...

Nothing new there.

The fact is that anti-Semitism had been brewing in Europe for centuries, often fueled by the Catholic Church and other Christian sects. The Holocaust was kind of a culmination of something that had been percolating for a long, long time. So, many people were quick to jump to the "Jews deserved it" line of thinking and were probably happy to see them extradited at first.

The OP, and the Holocaust, were blatant demonstrations of confirmation bias. People who want to feel superior to others will accept lots of bullshit theories, if they fit their pre-conceived notions.

There's a lot of that going around again these days.

[jwirr]

25. Religion did have a strong influence on this. I think it in Genesis there is a story about Ham, Shem

and Japeth that is interpreted by many as the story of the weak vs the strong. It can be seen in the paintings with all the white European people portrayed as early Christians. The allowance of slavery although at first it was not applied by race as much as military victory. Yet it was eventually a racial thing. All of this was religious influence.

Also when the above OP refers to moral superiority that is a judgment based on religion. If Darwin had anything to do with this religious interpretation it was that the theologians took what they wanted from his writing to back up their own mistakes.

[blogslut]

21. Yeah, I'm starting to agree with PZ Myers

Salon sucks so bad.

[bemildred]

22. The human mind is very good at making up explanations for things.

It is much worse when it comes to figuring out what needs to be explained.

And that has nothing much to do with Darwin. If not for Darwin, someone else or something else would have been used to the same end.

[FarCenter]

26. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Darwinism

Creationists have often maintained that social Darwinism—leading to policies designed to make the weak perish—is a logical consequence of "Darwinism" (the theory of natural selection in biology). Biologists and historians have stated that this is a naturalistic fallacy, since the theory of natural selection is merely intended as a description of a biological phenomenon and should not be taken to imply that this phenomenon is good or that it ought to be used as a moral guide in human society. Social Darwinism owed more to Herbert Spencer's ideas, together with genetics and Protestant Nonconformism, than to Charles Darwin's research. While most scholars recognize some historical links between the popularisation of Darwin's theory and forms of social Darwinism, they also maintain that social Darwinism is not a necessary consequence of the principles of biological evolution.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Darwinism

Also note that anti-Semitism in Central and Eastern Europe predates the development of racial superiority theories which were developed in Britain and America in the 1870s and that were later termed "social Darwinism". Hitler's racial views probably owe more to the racial tensions in Vienna among the ethnic groups of Austria-Hungary than they do to Spencer.

[Sunlei]

27. back in those days all they could do was measure stuff. Now we know, light skin is simply a mutation

of darker skin. That happened first and very early. We still see that mutation today with the albinos

Skin color melanin also evolved over about 125,000 years because of vitamin needs for successful reproduction and health.

We have learned all this new things about skin color in only about the past decade. Science marches forward

[MisterP]

28. headline's rather misleading, article's rather solid

1) Darwin did worry about this: "I have received in a Manchester Newspaper a rather a good squib, showing that I have proved 'might is right', & therefore that Napoleon is right & every cheating Tradesman is also right": even more tellingly, it's ADORABLE that the highest peak of evil that Victorian Britain could conceive of was Old Boney
2) yes, the young-earth creationists are Social Darwinists all--and they don't understand the irony because, seriously, they're YECs who don't think the Earth's flat, even though their warped mode of exegesis demands it
3) scientific racism was VERY mainstream, and only constant and relentless whitewashing can pretend it was seen as outré before Auschwitz was liberated (same thing happened with Mr. Lobotomy)

[muriel_volestrangler]

34. That Napoleon comment appears to have been about current affairs - Napoleon III in 1860

not 'Old Boney':

The Manchester Guardian, 20 April 1860, p. 4, carried a commentary on Origin entitled `National and individual rapacity vindicated by the law of nature'. The article mentioned Louis Napoleon's recent seizure of Savoy. Only the author's initials T. H. W. were given.

http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/entry-2782

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Turin

[MineralMan]

29. Darwin did not promote racism.

He merely explained how evolution creates changes in lifeforms over time.

It is an error to ascribe racism to Darwin. It is others who falsely used Darwins writings to foment racism who are to blame.

"Social Darwinism" is something Darwin would have rejected. It has no scientific basis.

There is no "Darwinistic racism." There is only racism. Leave Darwin out of it.

[cthulu2016]

30. Dear Salon: What fucking bullshit. Try it with a valid headline next time.

This article is objectively right wing because whatever it says in the body of the article, it starts off with a RW critique of Darwin in the headline, so fuck it.

Charles Darwin had nothing to do with the fucking holocaust, despite the claims of 1) a lot of RW nuts, and 2) Salon, apparently.

[intaglio]

31. I suggest you read this PZ Myers post about this

Salon sucks so bad
...notice the absence of any mention of the Catholic or Lutheran churches, which were far more powerful sources for promoting anti-semitism. All the author has is the claim that Hitler’s racism was “inspired” by Darwin.

No, it wasn’t. Hitler did not make scientific arguments; he did not cite or credit Darwin; he did think God was peachy-keen and justified his actions on behalf of the right German people. His actual sources did not much care for Darwin.

RationalWiki has a good discussion of the subject. In particular, it discusses Houston Stewart Chamberlain — you cannot seriously discuss Hitler’s race arguments without referencing Chamberlain, and it’s a sure sign of a hack when Darwin is given more blame than Chamberlain.

/snip

The Salon article is the kind of ahistorical hackery I’d expect from the Discovery Institute.

[Warren Stupidity]

32. where is the unrec?

[Tuesday Afternoon]

36. lord knows I miss it, too.

[jpak]

33. This asshole needs to read Darwin's Origin of Species - Darwin NEVER wrote anything in it about race

This is anti-evolution screed.