Scopes Trial and Social Darwinism

Kansas Hearings and Commentary by R. Stonjek, below: from evo-psych at yahoogroups.com

Witnesses criticize how evolution is taught
Science-minded lawyer blasts Kansas hearings as ‘kangaroo court’

The Associated Press
Updated: 9:47 p.m. ET May 5, 2005


TOPEKA, Kan. - Critics of evolutionary theory debated how schools should address questions about life's origins on Thursday, the first day of hearings that some have compared to the famed "Monkey Trial" in 1925.

Mainstream science organizations boycotted the trial-like hearings, conducted by a subcommittee of Kansas' State Board of Education. But a lawyer selected by the state's education department stepped in to represent the mainstream scientific point of view and question witnesses.

Critics of evolutionary theory, as well as advocates of an alternate view called intelligent design, were slated to provide testimony during the four days of subcommittee hearings.

The entire board plans to consider changes in June to standards that determine how Kansas students are tested on science. Last year's elections gave religious conservatives a majority on the 10-member board.

All conservative Republicans
The three board members presiding over the hearings are all conservative Republicans and receptive to criticism of evolution. Two of them, Kathy Martin and Connie Morris, agreed several times with witnesses critical of evolution.

"I was hoping this hearing would give me good, hard evidence that I could repeat," Morris said.

There were no protests, but over the lunch hour, the Kansas Highway Patrol brought in metal detectors for use outside the auditorium where the hearings were held. Lt. John Eichkorn said the patrol wasn't responding to a specific threat. "We're constantly re-evaluating our security needs," he said.

-more-

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7749688/print/1/displaymode/1098/

RKS:
It should be noted that Scoped was teaching social Darwinism, eugenics, and it was this in particular that was the source of protests. According to the religionists, all people were created equal. According to the text book that Scopes used, the black races were less evolved and therefore less human.

Here is a note I posted at sci.bio.evolution on the 7th of January, 2003:

I saw a very good documentary on the Scopes trial the other day.

Like most educated people, I previously saw the trial as an over-the-top
ultra-religious, typically American thing that required little attention. I
don't agree with every word that Darwin uttered, but I can't see anything
much at all in creation theory to recommend it.

One of the objections to "A Civic Biology" by George William Hunter was
something called "Social Darwinism", an erroneous extrapolation of Darwin's
theories to include the "races of man". The Hunter book boasts hierarchy
throughout, often showing the simplicity of the inferior early types
compared to the complexity of the later mammals.

Darwin didn't help things in the title of his most famous book:
"The Origin of Species
By means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the
Struggle for Life"

I don't think he was referring to races of humans.

If the Hunter book or one like it were to be used as a textbook at the
local school then I would be up in arms as well. One of the errors that
William Jennings Bryan made was to associate social Darwinism with
Evolutionary theory. Was this an understandable mistake?

Here is the offending passage from the book:
"The Races of Man. - At the present time there exists upon the Earth five
races or varieties of man, each very different from the other in
instincts, social customs, and, to an extent, in structure.
These are the Ethiopian or Negro type, originating in Africa; the Malay or
Brown race, from islands in the Pacific; the American Indian; the Mongolian
or yellow race, including the natives of China, Japan, and the Eskimos; and
finally, the highest type of all, the Caucasians, represented by the
civilised white inhabitants of Europe and America."
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/scopes/hunt196.htm
(actual book page image)
http://www3.mistral.co.uk/bradburyac/tenness4.html
(Text only)

In his own book, written after the trial and including the summation that
was never given at the trial, Bryan quotes the part of Darwin's theory that
he found most troubling:
"With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that
survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilized men, on
the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build
asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick; we institute poor laws;
and our medical men exert their utmost skills to save the life of everyone
to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has
preserved thousands who, from a weak constitution, would formerly have
succumbed to smallpox. Thus, the weak members of civilized society propagate
their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will
doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is
surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the
degeneration of a domestic race; but, excepting in the case of man himself,
hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worse animals to breed.

The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an
incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired
as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered in the manner
previously indicated more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we
check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration
in the noblest part of our nature. We must, therefore, bear the undoubtedly
bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind. (Bryan 1925,
p. 335, Darwin 1871 "The Descent of Man", pp. 168-9)"

This is accurate according to my copies of The Descent. I must admit I
wondered about this passage when I read through the Descent early last year.
But how is this resolved? Darwin is suggesting that if we are a bit
tougher, even on the poor and sick, and not as benevolent then we would weed
out the weak and make the race strong.

This is rather ironic when we consider his own constant battle with bad
health and the fact that all of his own fortune was inherited from his
father who made a fortune lending money to business and industry at the dawn
of the Industrial Revolution - just like getting in on the ground floor of
the computer revolution today.

This is not only the basic principle of eugenics and social Darwinism, but
(with Nietzsche and Wagnerian views) of the Nazi policy on race that
included the attempted extermination of the Jews.

Darwin was, in my opinion, wrong - even by his own theory. Without
variation, a population becomes vulnerable when the environment changes. In
the last century, the rise of often physically weak, poorly sighted,
socially challenged examples of humans, the opposite to the Nazi ideal, rose
to the top as the intellectual environment changed emphasis to include
computers. The computer nerd is exactly the kind of variation on the theme
of perfection that make a race stronger, not weaker.

The thing about evolution is that any species does not and often can not
know what the environment holds tomorrow. To be prepared, variants must be
brought forward. The stronger the species, the more variants that species
can support and the wider the environment change that can be endured.

Thus I think that had Darwin thought this through a little more carefully in
the context of his own theory he may have moderated or changed his opinion.
I am reminded that Einstein's parents thought that he might be
intellectually disabled - he didn't start talking until age 3 and was a very
slow starter generally.

--
Kind Regards,
Robert Karl Stonjek.


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It was the liberal (democrat) that were most fervently against the teaching of this form of Darwinism, Social Darwinism, and the redneck that found it amenable. How times have changed, now the position is reversed, but we should be very careful just who we take on as allies or bedfellows when taking sides on this issue - should we really have been rooting for Scopes in is 1935 trial? I think not, the Christians were actually standing up for equality on that occasion and may well have had the better case. It was the generalisation of one branch of 'Darwinism' to all evolutionary theory that was the tragedy, but social Darwinism was so widely embraced by the American redneck and by America in general that it was the only form that most people would have been familia with.

If the Scopes trial were to be repeated today, Scopes may well be jailed, not for teaching Evolutionary Theory, but for inciting racial hatred and discrimination against non-Caucasian people. This is not idle speculation, check out the facts for yourself.

But we to easily fall into the trap of being revisionists when a juicy justification for the current pro-evolutionary stance comes along. Can you confidently point to revisionists and say "naughty" when you do it yourself? No, sorry: it is simply not the right thing to do :)

Kind Regards
Robert Karl Stonjek