Biology and Social Thought

TheCanadian Review of American Studies, Volume 11,No. 1,Spring 1980 BiologyandSocialThought Peter J. Bowler Hamilton Cravens. The Triumph of Evolution: American Scientists and the H eredit)!-Environment Controversy,1900-1941. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1978. 351 + xvi pp Stephen Jay Gould. Ontogeny and Phylogeny. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977501 + ix pp. Garland E. Allen. Thomas Hunt Morgan: the Man and his Science. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1978. 447 + xvii pp. Here are three books relating to the history of biology, each of which has something to offer students of American culture and social thought. Two of them, however-those by Gould and Allen-have titles that might well discourage the non-specialist who has not been warned of their potential significance. The contributions of all three books are important considering the need for a clearer understanding of the role played in social thought by popularized biological theories. The vague notion of "social Darwinism" promoted by Richard Hofstadter's classic book has been overworked to the extent that it has become an obstacle to clear understanding of the issues involved. 1 Herbert Spencer's support for laissezfaire individualism, for instance, may have owed more to his biological Lamarckism than to the Darwinian selection principle. Furthermore, as Cravens' book points out, it is possible to see a far more direct impact by biological theories in the eugenics movement of the early twentieth century-and this was by no means inspired by Darwinism. It was several decades before Mendelian genetics could be combined with the selection mechanism, and in the meantime each could exert its own influence on social thought. One might predict, however, that it will be a fuller recognition of the role played by neo-Lamarckian theories that will generate the more drastic revisions of traditional historical interpretations. 88 Peter J. Bowler Of the three books described here, Cravens' is by far the more accessible to scholars in American history. Cravens writes as a historian of American culture rather than as a historian of science, although he has tried to synthesize the two areas by including a discussion of the biological developments relevant to his theme. The book begins with the emergence of the new experimental biology which, through its espousal of Mendelian genetics. fuelled an increasingly hereditarian social philosophy before the First World War. The eugenics movement fed on the belief that harmful characteristics such as feeblemindedness could be attributed to single genes and hence eliminated from the population by sterilizing the unfortunates thus affected. Much has already been written on this theme,2 but the virtue of Cravens' book is that he expatiates upon the conflict between the eugenics movement and the alternative approach developing among anthropologists and social theorists after the war, that based on the belief that human nature is malleable in terms of the environment within which the individual is raised. The r~sulting heredity-environment controversy raged throughout the next two decades, pitting those who believed that human nature is biologically determined against those who saw the possibility of cultural and social development independent of man's biological nature. Ultimately, Cravens argues, the controversy was exposed as futile when it was realized that the two factors interact in the creation of the individual personality. The social environment works within a very broad range of potentialities allowed by man's biological nature. Although it is valuable to have both sides of the story told in a single book, the historian of science at least will find Cravens' language perplexing. Where, one asks, is the "triumph of evolution" proclaimed by the title? We know that there was indeed a triumphant development in evolution theory in the l930's and 40's-the emergence of the modern synthesis based on the genetical theory of natural selection. But this receives scant notice in Cravens' analysis, for the obvious reason that the modern synthesis, far from allowing the evolutionary model to be extended to the sciences of man, was in fact responsible for the final elimination of the belief that biology could provide a framework within which to understand cultural development. The "synthesis" toward which Cravens' story leads is really nothing more than the original position staked...