Digital Evolution and Genocide (part 4)

Charles Darwin and Eugenics

At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked (18. 'Anthropological Review,' April 1867, p.236.), will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.
from The Descent of Man, Charles Darwin (1870).

Francis Galton's work would be no more than an intellectual curiosity of the nineteenth century like the study of phrenology had he not gained the support of Charles Darwin. He did gain that support and consequently those who, like me, wish to challenge eugenics must consider Darwin. It is because eugenicsts have, and know they have, Darwin's support and that of his theory, that they persist in their efforts. And it is because eugenicists have this support that fundamentalist Christians have opposed Darwinism throughout the Twentieth century. When they saw that "science" or eugenics was opposed to Christian morality, they took their stand with Christ. Without their efforts eugenics would have triumphed long ago. But perhaps a theory of digital evolution might heal this dispute between science and morality.

The essence of the union between the ideas of Darwin and Galton is in the quote above. It is a statement of what I call analog evolution, evolution without jumps. In analog evolution, man is not a separate species but a population strung out as it were between the apes from whom he emerged and super-duper man who will emerge from man as man emerged from the apes. Within the human population group, there are groups closer to the ape ancestors and these are "the Negro or Australian". There are also groups closer to super-duper man, one of which "the Caucasian". The "civilised races of man", the Caucasians and others, will "almost certainly exterminate" the savage, especially the Africana and the Australian Bushmen. Thus eugenicists have Darwin's authority for linking the genocide of races to natural selection, the prime mover of evolution.

And they have Darwin's authority for thinking that the birthrate of the inferior should be decreased by anyone interested in social evolution. In the Descent of Man, Darwin said:

A most important obstacle in civilised countries to an increase in
the number of men of a superior class has been strongly insisted on by
Mr. Greg and Mr. Galton,* namely, the fact that the very poor and
reckless, who are often degraded by vice, almost invariably marry
early, whilst the careful and frugal, who are generally otherwise
virtuous, marry late in life, so that they may be able to support
themselves and their children in comfort. Those who marry early
produce within a given period not only a greater number of
generations, but, as shewn by Dr. Duncan,*(2) they produce many more
children. The children, moreover, that are borne by mothers during the
prime of life are heavier and larger, and therefore probably more
vigorous, than those born at other periods. Thus the reckless,
degraded, and often vicious members of society, tend to increase at
a quicker rate than the provident and generally virtuous members. ...
[If the "inferior' have a higher birth rate then] In the eternal 'struggle
for existence,' it would be the inferior and less favoured race that ...
prevailed- and prevailed by virtue not of its good qualities but of its faults."
(Ch. 5, The Descent of Man)
... The advancement of the welfare of mankind is a most intricate problem: all
ought to refrain from marriage who cannot avoid abject poverty for their
children; for poverty is not only a great evil, but tends to its own
increase by leading to recklessness in marriage. On the other hand, as Mr.
Galton has remarked, if the prudent avoid marriage, whilst the reckless
marry, the inferior members tend to supplant the better members of society.
(Ch. 21 The Descent of Man)

I present these quotes to show that the eugenicists are entitled to claim that Darwin and his theory have supported their project from the beginning. - that he would have supported the Myrdal plan. The major evolutionary theorists of this century, Ronald Fisher, Julian Huxley, Sewall Wright, Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer and Ernst Mayr have all been eugenic society members so that current Darwinian theory supports eugenics. Or, to put it another way, they have all thought that evolution was analog, gradual, without jumps.

In considering the support for eugenics coming from Darwin and his theory as modernised, we can take several different approaches. We can say, for instance, that we do not know enough to take evolution into our own hands. We can ban eugenics as a social project - ban it from government support, at least, and give government support those targeted by eugenicists. There are good historical reasons for banning eugenics; it was the root of the Nazi race ideology. Or we can say that we cannot know the consequences of any attempt to favor one gene over another so there is really no such thing as scientific eugenics. We can also ask whether evolution is digital, happens in jumps, is not gradual. A digital evolution does not support eugenics.

(to be continued)