Primate diaries (another of my favorite science blogs) had an interesting couple of quotes under the general banner of Intelligent Design: Irrefutable evidence of the evolution of stupidity. You can track all the references directly so I won't summarise them. The key items relate to the claim that Darwin's ideas of the survival of the species gave rise to Hitler's racism and associated eugenic policies. This is a similar argument to the one that says Hitler loved Wagner, therefore Wagner is an evil Nazi . Now in both cases the linkage is helped by isolated quotes; Wagner certainly made some anti-semitic comments especially in Das Judenthum in der Musik and Darwin does say Any animal that strives to preserve the weak as man does, is committing racial suicide. However such comments need to be read in context.
Wagner was primarily attacking what he perceived as the commercialism of Mendelsson and Meyerbeer (and he had a long standing rivalry with the latter). Despite having many Jewish friends and being attacked by Nietzsche and others as being Jewish (well perhaps because of that) he used a stereotype common in his day. Now I don't defend this in any way, but I would argue that transposed into Hitler's Reich the socialist revolutionary in Wagner (acts for which he was exiled) would have come through. We simply don't know how his or anyone else's ideas would have changed in a different context.
Darwin, if we move on a few lines says: 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. That quote foreshadows more recent discoveries about the role of altruism in human evolution.
None of us know how we would act in a radically different context. We are changed by the flow of history and our interactions. Go back and look at the casual racist stereotyping of many a BBC programme in the 1960s that would be inconceivable now. Significant acts in the flow of history change the way we perceive the world, but they do so after those events. Darwin could not have anticipated the way in which a part of his ideas were used to justify eugenics (and there were many before Hitler); Wagner that using a racist stereotype would later be used to brand him with part responsibility for the Holocaust. We are all different people for the times we, and those we interact with, have lived through. We are patterned by the flow of history.
Comments (2)
But I assume you still hold onto the concept of responsibility?
Posted by Rob Weemhoff | August 6, 2010 1:10 PM
Posted on August 6, 2010 13:10
There's a further question as to how much it matters how despicable someone is as to whether we take their contribution seriously. Newton was a monster of paranoia, with a substantial interest in alchemy. Some of Wagner's close associates didn't appear to have his redeeming qualities (Humperdink). And then there are those who had no excuse at all, such as Heidegger, Reginald Goodall, and even P.G. Wodehouse.
Posted by Steve Freeman | August 7, 2010 2:38 PM
Posted on August 7, 2010 14:38