On the Origin of Hitler

About a month ago I was browsing through Science and noticed a review of a recent book by historian Peter Bowler. (The review requires a subscription, so instead I'll direct interested readers here for a roughly equivalent review.) His book, Darwin Deleted, imagines a world where Darwin did not exist, as a device for illuminating other ideas about evolution. Apparently he argues that if Darwin had not existed, evolution might not have been as contentious of an issue. This is because, while many religious people weren't particularly thrilled with the idea of evolution, it was natural selection as a mechanism that really got their dander up. It was just too materialistic--even for some scientists. In fact, during the early twentieth century natural selection took a back seat until the modern synthesis of the 1940s put it back in the center. As I understand it, Bowler imagines a world where evolution was accepted relatively peacefully, with natural selection being discovered later.

Bowler also argues that the atrocities of World War II would still have occurred without Darwin. This seems completely obvious to me, but a staple of anti-evolution propaganda is to blame Darwin for Hitler. In fact, just last week the Discovery Institute posted a video on YouTube doing just that. At first glance you can see why the argument appears convincing. Darwin said that evolution occurs by survival of the best adapted, so Hitler took Darwin's theory to the logical conclusion by attempting to eliminate the weak.

I can accept that some people just repeat this kind of thing because that's what they heard, but it's harder for me to believe that thinking people take such things seriously. It seems transparently nasty and dumb to me. For one thing, even if Darwin did serve as a source of Hitler's inspiration, that fact wouldn't have any logical consequence for the validity of Darwin's ideas about how nature works. (I bet the German artillery loved Newton's ideas too!) Moreover, we could hardly hold Darwin responsible for the deeds of a future sociopath. But what I find more annoying is that people who say this must ignore or forget known facts and social currents that existed independent of Darwin.

For example, animals were bred for desired traits for centuries and millennia before Darwin. Darwin himself drew on artificial selection--i.e. breeding--for his insight of natural selection. Consider the following quote:

… Experience has long since taught mankind the necessity of observing certain natural laws in the propagation of animals, or the stock will degenerate and finally become extinct. But strange to say, in regard to the human animal, these laws, except in certain particulars, are more or less disregarded in these latter times. The inevitable consequence is, the race is degenerating, new diseases are introduced, while effeminacy and barrenness are on the increase: and worse than all, this evil condition of the body has its effects upon the mind…

That was George Q. Cannon writing in 1857, three years before he was called as an Apostle and a year before Darwin published Origin of Species. You could just as easily say that Hitler was applying widely accepted principles of animal breeding to humans. It simply doesn't take a theory of species formation to decide that your race (however defined) is better than others, or to hate Jews, or to be nationalist, or to think the "weak" are a drain on society, and so on. The Nazis appropriated anything that seemed to lend support to their ideology. If Darwin's theory was one of those, then that's unfortunate but it's hardly Darwin's fault (he died in 1882, for heaven's sake) and means nothing for its validity as science.

One more thing: the idea that species progress was not Darwin's. Darwin understood that natural selection would result in adaptation to environmental circumstances, not the production of some kind of platonic ideal. Thus, to argue that elimination of the weak was necessary for human evolutionary progress would be a bastardization of Darwinian evolution. As I mentioned above, Darwinian evolution was eclipsed for a while by other ideas about evolution, some of which involved progress. (If blame is to be laid, I would bet those ideas had more influence.)

In their zeal to cast aspersions on evolution, anti-evolutionists also often go a step further and say that Darwin himself was a supporter of social Darwinism. To the extent that is true it is unfortunate although, again, it doesn't matter what Darwin thought with respect to the validity of his theory. But although he was a product of his time, Darwin was relatively progressive in some of his views (eloquently opposing slavery, for example) and it seems that detractors have a difficult time making their case without distorting his writings. For example, in The Descent of Man he wrote:

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.

Oh, that's terrible! Except when you look at the context you see that the sentence is the first half of a hypothetical he uses to make a point about how extinction erases the gradations between species. And considering Europe's colonial enterprise Darwin's statement probably seemed like an unremarkable prediction [1]. It's rather uncharitable to rip that sentence out of context and present it as though Darwin hoped for the extinction of other races, as the DI video does, but that's the kind of garbage I've come to expect from them.

Social Darwinism and the eugenics movement, to say nothing of the Nazis, were wrong. If we pawn it all off on Darwin, however, then we miss important lessons about the naturalistic fallacy, the naive application of science, human rights, ethics, the golden rule, economics, and so on. When it comes to Hitler, Darwin is a distraction.


Notes:
1. Americans weren't innocent either. Manifest destiny, anyone?

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