Darwin v Hitler

File this one under strange bedfellows. The Left Wing Huffington Post has a piece by David Klinghoffer of the Discovery Institute. The D.I. is an organization dedicated to saving the world from Charles Darwin. Klinghoffer gives us the standard moral/political argument against Darwinism. Nazism and Eugenics are the malignant but altogether legitimate offspring of Darwin's theory.

Hitler's ideas, [David Berlinski, another Discovery fellow] carefully notes, "came from many different sources but no honest account will omit Darwin." A reading of Mein Kampf makes that clear. Certainly, Berlinski says, the men who formulated Nazi ideology "weren't reading the Gospels."

Well, if no honest account of Hitler's ideas would omit Darwin, one wonders why Hitler omitted Darwin. If the Fuhrer ever mentioned Chuck in his speeches or writings or his dreadful book, I have not seen the quote. Hitler certainly did have a concept of evolution and of genetics, but his grasp of the science was about as close to real science as astrology is to astronomy. He was a largely ignorant man.

There are two problems with Klinghoffer's screed. One is that misunderstandings of genetics were as much responsible for the atrocity of forced sterilization in the U.S. and elsewhere as Darwinian evolution. If the latter is discredited by the atrocities, should we abandon genetics?

Worse is the fact that Nazi racist mythology is wildly inconsistent with Darwinian biology. Let me count the ways.

First, Nazi racial mythology is progressive in structure. Human beings are superior to vermin, just as the higher races of man are superior to the lower races, let alone the vermin race. By contrast, Darwinian biology supports no theory of progress. In terms of reproductive fitness, bacteria are superior to cockroaches, and cockroaches to Catholics. But that is true only on the most speculative of grounds, as in "which species would survive an asteroid strike?" For purposes of real science, each species is surviving comfortably in its own ecological niche, and that is a kind of equality.

Second, Nazi mythology takes race seriously. Darwinian biology does not. There is as much or more genetic diversity among Black Africans as there is between Zulus and Norwegians. Race is not a scientific concept and it is no part of modern Darwinian Theory.

Third, Nazi mythology treasures racial purity. If both mom and dad had blond hair and blue eyes, you will be stronger for it; and a large population of pure Aryans is stronger than one that is tainted with the blood of the lesser kinds. By contrast, Darwinian biology points toward genetic diversity as an utterly essential factor. A population that is genetically uniform is prey to any pathogen or environmental change (climate change, or a change in the food supply) that may come along. What allows populations to roll with environmental punches is genetic diversity. That's why sexual reproduction is a good thing (it keeps changing the genetic code), and why inbreeding is a distinctly bad thing.

Fourth, Nazi mythology ranks races according to their nobility. Aryans are bolder, more musical and more brilliant, more warlike, etc. Darwinian biology has nothing to do with ranking races, in which it does not believe, or populations, or individuals. But if you tried to get a ranking out of it, the only thing it would tell you is that any group of animals or human beings is more likely to stick around longer if it has more babies. I am guessing that that standard wouldn't have favored early twentieth century Germans over their Chinese counterparts.

Darwinism is not a theory of human history. It is not a theory of human progress, or human virtue, or human ethics. It is a biological theory that tries to understand how the various forms of organisms emerged and by what forces those forms are sustained. It gives no support, none at all, to racist mythologies. Those who say that it does either do not understand the biology, or are not honest in their interpretation.

Comments

[Anthony]

The only concern David Klinghoffer has is to discredit Darwin with the hope that science will collapse soon after than. The theory of evolution is the underpinning of modern Biology. Mr. Klinghoffer should take time refreshing his understanding of modern European history and science. Then he can write an informed opinion pieces on those two topics with only combining topics that are based on facts.

[Donald Pay]

I absolutely agree with you here, but you also probably know that several of the scientists (particularly R.A. Fisher) who carried on studies in evolution, genetics and population biology after Darwin did try to extend Darwin's theory into theories of human eugenics. The Nazis used a particularly twisted version of eugenics theory to justify their racial purity theories and their "final solution." Fisher was a brilliant man, and contributed a lot to statistics, evolution, ecology and other fields. He was also a racist, but he did not believe in killing people to achieve his eugenic goals. He was more concerned with low fecundity rates among the higher class, so his solution was for upper class whites to "get busy." Today evolutionary scientists don't consider Fisher's eugenic theories valid, though much of his other work is hailed as revolutionary.

[John Wilkins]

A few points:

1. If the subhumans outbreed the Aryans, then on a Darwinian account, they are fitter, Hitler notwithstanding.

2. Hitler and the Nazis used Koch, not Darwin. They repeatedly used a hygiene metaphor, comparing Jews, Slavs and Gypsies to a vermin infestation that carried disease. So, should we treat epidemiology and hygiene as tained because of the use to which the Nazis put it?

3. Eugenics depends more on genetics than evolution, so I suppose we should abandon genetics too?

4. There are two kinds of eugenics: positive and negative. A negative eugenicist attempts to eliminate the "pathological idiots", but the positive eugenicist, of whom Fisher was one, merely encouraged the "fit" (i.e., upper class educated English) to breed more. To ascribe the sins of the one to the other is to make a bad historical judgement. Not that I expect the Discovery Idiots to pay that any mind.

[KB]

Thanks for the comment, Donald. I don't doubt that are some folks out there that used Darwin for racists arguments. It was certainly true of the Social Darwinists. But as John Wilkins points out, the Social Darwinist argument contains a contradiction. If you need to intervene in order to limit the procreation of the lower types, then they aren't lower in any Darwinian sense.

[Donald Pay]

Not to get too far into the weeds on this, but also guarding against overbroad generalizations in your piece, there are any number of reproductive strategies that have evolved, and all of them can impart advantages over the others, depending on environmental conditions. While sexual reproduction generally confers more genetic diversity than others (generally a good thing), you do find that selfing and asexual reproduction have often evolved from sexually reproducing species. Why would this be? There are times when the advantages imparted by mechanisms that promote greater genetic diversity impart a cost that is greater than the advantages imparted by selfing or asexual reproduction.

There is a lot of information out there on reproductive strategies, but here's and interesting one which deals with the evolution of selfing in one plant species.

http://www.pnas.org/content/106/13/5241.full

[KB]

Donald: strange as it feels, I can't disagree with anything you say here. Yes, some species seem to do quite well with genetic purity. Biology is not a study for people who want unambiguous laws. I would be interested to learn of a case like with among mammals. I am pretty sure that, among ape populations, genetic diversity is a pretty good thing.