Introduction
How well does a physicist really know nature and its secrets? To what depth has a biologist understood the phenomena of life and the intricate pathways it follows? Naive questions, at first glance. If nature is the subject of study for the physicist and if the biologist is the material specialist in matters concerning living organisms, how is it possible that they do not possess the relevant knowledge, even if it is always conditional and provisional, within the framework of the general ambiguity and uncertainty that pervades every epistemological endeavor? At least, says “common sense” (which those who tremble before the complexity of human affairs love to invoke), even if they do not possess some deep, absolute knowledge, they still know more than any ordinary person. The indulgent smiles and clever ironies that modern knights of “right reason” so readily deploy against such irreverent questions are, however, abruptly cut short when some very simple questions are posed. What exactly is nature, and what is life? Once one enters such a Saturnalia of thought, the roles of the naive and the initiate can suddenly be reversed, and the (supposed) specialist may have nothing else to offer the discussion but worn-out commonplaces.
The series of questions can however proceed even further. If the definition of what constitutes nature and life is a matter par excellence philosophical (hence also political), could something similar apply even to the definition of physics and biology themselves as specialized branches of knowledge? In other words, how well does a physicist know his physics and a biologist know his biology? The question no longer concerns only the subject matter of each specialist, but science itself, its methodological principles and the conceptual tools with which it aspires to grasp this subject matter. Such inquiries may seem deliberately provocative only to the ears and eyes of those who have succumbed, willingly or unwillingly, to a pedestrian positivism of the herd that places science on some altar, the corpse of which does not seem to decompose for two centuries; a positivism that could easily be read also as the internalization of alienation from the objects and processes of knowledge production – something that simultaneously signals also an internalization of mechanisms of power.
For the sake of truth, one might consider how exactly the same discussion, transferred to another, more “trivial” and mundane field, does not create uncomfortable reactions or dependent reflexes at all. How well does a footballer know football? Is he truly the de facto “expert,” or is he simply a component of a system consisting of coaches, doctors, nutritionists, managers, and fans, where each has their own (legitimate) claims to knowledge, and all together function to produce what is called a football spectacle?
And finally, could someone among them claim to know more than an academic who has studied the sociology of sports and understands the web of social and economic pressures that have pushed footballers to become super-athletes in recent years? How petty can the claim of a footballer that “only he knows about football” seem now, in the face of all this spectrum of relationships and knowledge without which he would be nothing more than someone insistently “playing around” by kicking a ball on some beach? So why are the claims of certain scientists that only they know their science accepted without question, and not only do they not receive any ironic treatment, but they remain unscathed even from the slightest attempt at criticism?
The purpose of this text is not to conduct a psycho-social anatomy of modern positivism and its late (even “left-wing anti-conspiracy”) defenders. We will limit ourselves to something simpler: recounting the emergence of genetics as a specialized scientific branch and the conditions under which it was born. These are, of course, “facts” that in official textbooks of biology and medical students occupy a place as anecdotal footnotes at the end of chapters. And when this happens, these historical references usually take the form of a narrative that leads legally to the gradual discovery of truth through the heroic efforts of researchers who should be treated only as crusaders of scientific objectivity. The result? A biology/medical graduate thinks he has learned and knows (the one and only) genetic science, when in essence what he has been taught is nothing other than a historical snapshot within a long process in which the intellectual transitions of scientific concepts and the shifts of social stakes occur far more frequently than he could possibly conceive, and often coincide.
A conventional history of genetics
Based on a conventional narrative, one would expect, therefore, that the history of genetics begins with the discovery of genes1. However, a distinctive characteristic of this field is that it was born before its quintessential subject (genes) and that for entire decades it survived and developed without any tangible or material reference point. It was during the second half of the 19th century that it essentially sprouted and matured, shortly after the emergence of biology itself as a distinct, specialized science around 1800.
Since genes were isolated (laboratory and conceptually) only in the middle of the 20th century, on what basis was early genetics based? The key issue it had to address (and even create to some extent) was that of heredity, namely the way in which certain biological characteristics are transmitted within the members of a species or even between species (if we are talking about their evolution). From a purely scientific point of view (which does not exist as such, but can be accepted for analytical reasons), the reflections that were more clearly encoded in the work of two men played a decisive role in this direction. First, in the work of Darwin, who published The Origin of Species in 1859. Darwin obviously knew nothing about genes and thus could not speak with great accuracy about any material carrier of heredity. The important thing, however, was that he introduced the idea that not only humans but all living organisms have a history. Therefore, species are not predetermined nor separated by strict boundaries, but are in a process of constant mutations, transmitting, sometimes incompletely, certain characteristics from generation to generation. If all organisms have their history, on the other hand, perhaps human history ultimately has a lot of “nature” within it, in the form of fixed and unchangeable characteristics. This was the conceptual step taken by the second hero of that era. As early as 1865, Galton declared that “we humans are merely transmitters of a nature that we have inherited and that we do not have the power to change.”
This was the broader context within which the first explorations began into the inner workings of the cell in search of a material carrier of heredity. Virchow was among the first (in 1858) to formulate the hypothesis that the nucleus of cells plays some critical role during their division and reproduction. The term “chromosomes” was initially proposed by Waldeyer in 1888 to describe those “nuclear particles” that replicate prior to the replication of the cell itself. By the end of the 19th century, it had started to become generally accepted that every organism consists of a multitude of cells which divide and multiply continuously. Boveri had experimentally indicated in 1889 that the form of an organism is determined primarily by the cell nucleus. In the same year, Hugo de Vries proposed a functional distinction between the nucleus and the cytoplasm: the nucleus’s primary function is the transmission/conveyance of characteristics, whereas that of the cytoplasm is growth. The nucleus carries so-called pangenes, which remain inactive while inside the nucleus and become activated once they are in the cytoplasm. The term pangene that de Vries chose to use was borrowed from Darwin’s theory of pangenesis, according to which each organism carries in its reproductive glands certain microscopic particles (the gemmules) responsible for the phenomena of heredity.
The focus of genetics increasingly centered on the nucleus of cells. An additional push toward the final “discovery” of genes came from the effort to transform genetics into a strictly experimental science through the use of model organisms—in the early 20th century, the well-known fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) was the first hero (or victim) of this endeavor. Later, other organisms would also be enlisted, such as mice or even microorganisms. The reason these organisms were so significant was that they could be reproduced in pure genetic lines with known and stable characteristics, and they had rapid reproduction rates, allowing any mutations to be observed within reasonable timeframes. This, in turn, enabled geneticists to apply more rigorous experimental protocols in studying inheritance phenomena. The experiments of Sutton and Boveri in 1902 finally convinced a large part of the scientific community that chromosomes are the material carriers of heredity. The term “genetics” was proposed only in 1906 by biologist William Bateson (father of anthropologist Gregory Bateson), and the word “gene” followed shortly after, in 1909, based on a proposal by Wilhelm Johannsen. Genes had now acquired not only a material dimension (even though their exact composition was still unknown), but had also become a tool, an object of manipulation. Through the lens of genetics, Darwinism experienced a new flourishing during this same period, now reinterpreted on a genetic basis where genes, rather than Darwin’s gemmules, held the leading role.
Once it had become universally accepted that genes reside within the chromosomes of the nucleus, the next stage was to determine their exact composition. For most biologists of the first half of the 20th century, it was almost an axiom that genes should be composed of proteins, since proteins exhibited far greater diversity compared to the bases of DNA and their tedious repetitiveness—chromosomes, apart from DNA, also contain proteins, which had been known since then. It was the American Oswald Avery who, through his experiments on pneumococcal cultures in the 1930s and 1940s, demonstrated that DNA is the “transforming principle,” that is, the substance that can transform a culture of harmless pneumococcus into a virulent one. In 1953, Watson and Crick would publish their findings on the structure (of the double helix) of DNA, without however explaining how genes are translated into proteins. These publications include a well-known excerpt, considered one of the first attempts to view DNA as “code” and “information”:
“The backbone of our model exhibits an absolute regularity, but any sequence of base pairs can fit into this structure. Therefore, it is possible for many combinations to fit within a long molecule, and thus it seems likely that the exact sequence of bases is also the code that carries genetic information.”
The breaking of the genetic code would finally become feasible in the 1960s, through the work of Nirenberg and Matthaei, who showed that triplets of DNA bases correspond to amino acids2.
The degenerate nature
It is doubtful whether at the time these lines are being written there exists even a single student in biology and medical schools (or even a graduate of theirs) who knows even the basic milestones through which genetics passed to reach its present form, as briefly outlined above. The usual justification for this lack of historical awareness on the part of scientists and specialists typically revolves around variations of the theorem that history constitutes something external to the core of each science and the truths it produces. Indeed, it may be of some interest to those who enjoy such historical retrospectives, but what matters is understanding the basic concepts and tools of your science, something that is achievable (if not even facilitated) without the historical foundation and its burdens. However naive such a position may seem from a sociological and epistemological perspective, the possibility of acquiring a degree (even a quite high one) of instrumental understanding of any techno-scientific field should not be ruled out, while remaining strictly within technical and merely technical frameworks. Just as a footballer can be a great artist of the ball without knowing the slightest about the social and political significances of sports, so too can a specialist be excellent in the technical aspect of his work, without having the faintest idea of how his field was born – therefore, without the faintest idea of where it is heading or what its broader interconnections are with other aspects of the social.
The example of genetics is once again useful here. As already mentioned, genetics was born in an attempt to answer the problem of heredity. The next question that may arise at this point concerns the very concept of heredity itself. Why did this begin to be perceived as a problem in the 19th century and not earlier? Was there even such a concept or a similar one?
As expected, issues of reproduction (of plants, animals and humans) have been at the center of concern for almost every human society. For a large part of nomadic, pre-agricultural and pre-pastoral populations, reproductive power, the ability to create new life, was the exclusive privilege of women. This was a perception that gradually eroded and lost its weight, without however ever completely eliminating the role of women. In later, clearly more patriarchal societies, this role was significantly downgraded in order to attribute greater significance to male sperm power. The Aristotelian perception constitutes a classic example of this. According to it, both man and woman contribute to the creation of new life, with the woman providing the prime matter and the man the form that the new creature will take. This difference was crucial, since here we were not simply dealing with a division of equal roles. Within the Aristotelian system of nature, matter resembled more of an inert, malleable and amorphous first substance. Only the concept of form (derived from man) had the power to give it shape and to compose it into a coherent unit.
Until the dawn of modernity (roughly until the 15th and 16th centuries), the fundamental perceptions regarding the issue of reproduction did not change significantly in Western societies. A key component of this complex of ideas was also the belief that nature possesses an eminent creative force. Beings could undergo radical transformations (e.g., a caterpillar into a butterfly) or even originate from beings of a different kind (e.g., maggots “being born” from a decomposing corpse). The concept of strictly defined species, each following its own genealogical line, was not only absent but even contrary to direct empirical evidence. Nature was seen as fertile and in a continuous orgasm of creation and metamorphoses. As a result, there was an absence of any serious theory of heredity. Although certain related phenomena had indeed been observed and recognized, their specific weight within the broader theories of reproduction was extremely slight. The phenomena of heredity did not possess the necessary stability and regularity to warrant particular attention. Any similarities observed between ancestors and descendants were naturally attributed to the common environment in which both grew up. The fundamental issue, therefore, was that of generation—creation, and not that of heredity.
The subordinate nature
Entering now into the 17th and 18th centuries, the relevant discussions continued to revolve largely around the problem of reproduction. After it was first accepted that all female members of a species possess eggs, the next issue that intensely occupied the minds of that era was that of primacy. Which material element contributes most to the creation of an organism: the egg, according to ovist theories, or the sperm, according to spermist theories? Equally intense were the disputes regarding the preexistence and preformation of living beings, that is, whether the basic structures and functions of an organism are already formed in the seed (literally) and not as a result of some ontogenetic development. Leeuwenhoek had observed spermatozoa under the microscope since 1679. Impressed by their motility, he considered them essentially complete miniature organisms. In any case, however, some inquiry regarding issues of biological heredity was still remarkably absent. The direct data of experience simply offered no indication that such a subject was worthy of more thorough study.
Although the concept of biological heredity was still non-existent, it was during that era that certain precursor phenomena emerged, preparing the ground both at an ideological level and in more practical and technical terms. The encounter of Europeans with other, radically different cultures—which had flourished in entirely different natural environments and were disappearing before their eyes (and often by their hands)—gradually created the sense that even nature itself might have a history and be subject to evolutionary processes, and therefore that history could be subjugated through the subjugation of nature. This perception, that both nature and history should bow beneath the human whip, indeed shaped the entirety of modernity and later led one version of it to eugenics, the precursor to genetics.
At a more practical level now, the issue of transmitting stable biological characteristics from generation to generation acquired particular significance during the second half of the 18th century. The reason was the needs of breeders (such as the famous Bakewell), especially in Britain and Central Europe, who were now turning to increasingly mass methods of meat and wool production. To achieve high yields, they experimented with the logic of crossbreeding, which however, to be feasible in the first place, required a shift in the focal point of breeders. Instead of focusing on individual members of a herd, which in any case was relatively small and offered few opportunities for crossbreeding, they now had to move to a logic of large populations and selective reproduction. These practices were of course within the repertoire of smaller producers as well, but were considerably more limited – in a small herd every new member counts significantly and is not easily “discarded”. Mendel’s research in the 19th century on the characteristics of peas would begin precisely from the need of monasteries (among the largest land and livestock owners) to investigate the possibilities of increasing agricultural and livestock production.
This detachment from the individual and the refocusing of the lens toward larger scales found its corresponding expression even in the “purely” scientific field. The 18th century was the century of Linnaeus. Linnaeus is basically known for the system of species classification he introduced and which is largely followed to this day. However, what is almost never understood is the magnitude of the conceptual shift that such a taxonomic endeavor required. For species classification to be possible, it first had to be accepted that there exist clear dividing lines between them. This in turn presupposed that the chaotic and degenerate nature of previous centuries now had to shed notions of spontaneous generation and metamorphoses. Each species, on the contrary, had to reproduce with stability and regularity – based on “laws” of reproduction. The basic conceptual unit now became the species and not the individual, and the reproductive mechanisms of the species became the paramount problem of biology that was constituted as a science around 1800, precisely based on this problem.
By the end of the 18th century, therefore, the groundwork had already been laid for the emergence of biological heredity. However, if we can speak of biological heredity, this implies that there were other types of heredity as well. In fact, the concept of heredity initially had political and social meanings and was only later transposed into biological contexts3. Hereditary matters had always been related to the rules governing the distribution of the property, prestige, and privileges of a deceased person to their successors. These were the elements that were transmitted to their (not necessarily biological, in today’s sense) descendants. Especially in medieval Europe, such issues became of urgent importance from a certain point onward, particularly for the noble class. In order to break the transmission rights of the nobles and make their assets subject to confiscation, the Church had proceeded to establish strict rules of kinship and consequently related prohibitions and taboos of “miscegenation.” As a response and defensive move against the Church’s appetites, the nobles adopted strictly patrilineal transmission so as to avoid excessive fragmentation of their property. At the same time, however, they engaged obsessively in tracing their lineage and constructing complex genealogical trees in order to reject any accusations and claims by the Church. Engagement with heredity and genealogical trees, therefore, within human frameworks, was an occupation of the upper classes for political reasons long before it found its way as an ideology of the herd in eugenic theories.
Beyond the legal field, however, there was another area where the adjective “hereditary” found a somewhat more systematic use. This was the field of hereditary diseases, which had indeed been observed but played a minor role in discussions among doctors (who had to deal with much more serious diseases from the point of view of their spread). This would change in the 18th century, when the term “heredity” as a noun also appeared among French doctors. However, the interest of these particular doctors was not purely medical. Initially, in the 18th century, they enlisted the concept of heredity to provide an explanation for what they, as members of the bourgeoisie, perceived as the flabbiness of the aristocratic class afflicted by such hereditary diseases. In the 19th century, when the aristocratic classes had essentially been defeated, “heredity” would be turned by bourgeois doctors against the working classes. The reason these lived in such miserable conditions and were constantly afflicted by diseases must be due to something they transmitted to their children. One is tempted to think that the bourgeois class appropriated for its own benefit a conceptual framework developed by the aristocratic classes (regarding heredity and family trees) in order to first turn it against them and subsequently against their new, dangerous rival. And it proved to be a weapon that was extremely effective over time.
The designed nature
In the second half of the 19th century, when Darwin introduced the scientific hypothesis that species also have a dynamic history and when Galton formulated the view that there is something that is biologically transmitted from generation to generation based on certain “laws,” without individuals having any control over the transmission process, the ground was already prepared long ago to accept such perceptions based on the concept of biological heredity. In 1883, Galton also introduced the word “eugenics” to denote the science of improving species based on heredity. When the word “eugenics” is mentioned today, (rightfully) defensive reflexes are stirred. The problem, on the other hand, with such a reaction, if it remains at a purely emotional level, is that it can lead to certain historically distorted readings of eugenics. The most basic of these sees eugenics as a historical paradox, as the construct of some sick, perhaps even marginal minds that converged (only) in Nazi Germany to implement their sick plans.
In fact, eugenics was a much broader political and scientific movement with deep roots in the European imagination and with ramifications across the entire political spectrum4. It managed to spread these roots so extensively while developing in the climate of the late 19th century, when concerns about heredity (now understood biologically), about the health of nations, about their ability to survive in the future, and about the possibility of building a future for the next generations5 based on scientific standards were dominant. This was a utopian vision of the liberal bourgeoisie regarding the possibilities of designing the future, which, compared to the Hegelian-Marxist theodicy that has at times been accused (to some extent, justifiably) as a religious soteriology, appears very grounded and realistic6.
Obviously, such an obsession with designing the future concealed, at a deeper level, uncertainty and anxiety about the outcome of that future. The sources of this anxiety were multiple7. First, an important role was played by the fact that colonialism was at its peak and that, for many ethnonational entities, this was the era when they finally crystallized into a more stable form. Within such a political environment of extreme geopolitical competition, rhetoric about “national identity” held a central position, often externalized into extreme nationalism or even racism (which was then taking its first steps in its biological versions). Europeans had long been naturally imbued with a sense of superiority over the peoples they conquered and subjugated. However, the legitimization of European barbarism was not based on biological concepts. The “white man’s burden,” which was supposed to civilize barbarians even through violence, was of a cultural and technological nature. The “others,” the “barbarians,” were not inherently inferior, but simply lagging behind in the race of technological progress. Perceptions of biological (rather than cultural) inferiority came along precisely at the end of the 19th century, in an effort to harden national identities. Even history itself, as a specialized scientific discipline, developed during the 19th century, having, on one hand, the ambition to be strictly “objective,” but, on the other hand, its central goal was to provide an identity to the emerging nation-states8. The fact that species and living organisms acquired history through Darwin’s hands shortly after human nation-states acquired history through Ranke’s hands (one of the founders of modern historiography) is probably not a historical coincidence.
The skepticism of nation-states toward their surroundings was accompanied, however, by skepticism toward their own internal affairs. The entire 19th century was for Europe a century of crises, both political and economic. At the same time, it was the century of the working class’s emergence as a conscious, dynamic social body that could not be ignored. The response of the bourgeois class was twofold. On one hand, it had to justify the evident social and economic inequalities in an attempt to preserve its own ideology of equality. The concept of biological inferiority (workers were often likened to monkeys, just as Africans and Native Americans were) was repeatedly invoked for this purpose: the reason working classes remained degraded was due to their inherent inadequacy. The other aspect of the liberal bourgeoisie’s response concerned the enhanced role the state had to assume in shaping the nation. The welfare state, which began to emerge at that time, was not merely a concession to the demands of the working classes. It was such a concession, but only to the extent that it stripped away a significant portion of workers’ autonomy. The welfare state had to ensure the health of the nation, producing racially robust offspring, especially given the state’s need for large armies of conscripts. Therefore, it not only could, but had to intervene in the private lives of its citizens, even in their sexual choices9. The obsession with athletics and good health dates back to that proto-heroic era of the welfare state, which never missed an opportunity to build stadiums, promote cycling, and drive its citizens to flood the beaches.
This essentially technocratic conception of the “scientific management” of society was in continuous dialogue with developments in biology and genetics. The path of influences between social perceptions and Darwinism was not one-way, from the former to the latter. The warlike perception of society as a set of competing individuals was also expressed as a semi-biological truth in the idea that “natural selection” promotes those individuals who are stronger within nature. And the game of reflections did not end here, as Darwinism returned to its social version to lend a biological hue to the supposedly primitive social competition.
Another channel of communication between eugenic–genetic and broader social practices existed in the area of bureaucratic organization: of animals and humans. Those geneticists who at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century needed pure genealogical lines of laboratory animals for their experiments had some more humble predecessors. These were the well-known breeders who have already been mentioned above. Due to the transition towards an almost industrial method of livestock production (especially concerning the processing of livestock products), breeders were the first who needed and managed to develop stable and “standardized” production lines of raw materials—it is easy to imagine potential problems that batches of wool of different qualities might cause in textile factory machinery. Part of their work was also the creation of catalogs with genealogical and statistical data, just as geneticists would do later. The need, therefore, for “pure” and “stable” genealogical lines by geneticists was analogous to the need for “pure” and distinct inputs into the lines of industrial production that were playing an increasingly significant economic role. The “purity” required by genetic kinship resonates with the regularity demanded by Taylorism.
Summarizing, we can therefore say that, first, the problem of biological heredity and genetics as the science that would resolve it emerged as fields worthy of study at the same time that the issue of national identities was forcefully raised. Genetics offered a framework for understanding the problem of identity, while simultaneously having the advantage of possessing a scientific legitimacy. Second, as a science of large populations and individual biological predetermination – in other words, individuals could be predetermined, but the possibility of large-scale interventions remained open, through promoting the fittest and rejecting undesirable subjects – it was in sync with the broader social imaginary of the scientific management of social issues, mainly through interventions by the welfare state. Third, the spirit of scientific management would eventually become dominant not only in the area of social reproduction, but also in that of production. Genetics would follow the same ideas about purity that were necessary for the economic functioning of Western societies during the second industrial revolution. All this confluence of ideological preconceptions, economic demands, and political pressures fed a generalized anxious disorder of the urban order toward the end of the 19th century, pushing it toward a worldview that saw ruthless competition as the driving force of history – and in eugenics, a model for managing centrifugal tendencies within society10.
It is within this quasi-warlike perception of nature and the technocratic understanding of social life that genetics was born11. Does this mean that genetics is a false science? The question, formulated in this way, is misleading. It is not simply a matter of the truth or falsity of a science, in this case genetics. The issue does not merely lie in whether genes exist or not12 and to what extent they predetermine human behaviors (in reality, far less than is typically presented), but rather in the intellectual burdens they carry. The fact that the gene is now treated as a purely scientific concept in no way implies that it is outside of history, that it has been freed from the social forces that gave birth to it. A simple reminder suffices at this point. If gene therapies are considered the future of medicine and therapeutic techniques, this is only possible to the extent that illness is perceived as a deviation of a mechanism from certain norms that can be corrected through external interventions, and not as an imbalance in relation to an environment that continuously creates pressures. It is not the environment that is pathogenic, but rather the subject itself at its core that bears the mark of illness. From this perspective, modern genetics rightfully continues the role that eugenics was once called upon to play, even though now, for obvious reasons of political correctness, it must be expressed in a more refined and discreet manner.
Separatrix
- One can find stories of genetics in the following: 1) Life’s greatest secret: The story of the race to crack the genetic code, M. Cobb, Basic Books, 2) Who wrote the book of life?: a history of the genetic code, L. Kay, Stanford University Press, 3) A cultural history of heredity, Müller-Wille S. and Rheinberger H., The University of Chicago Press. The first provides a somewhat conventional history of genetics, without particular references to the broader socio-political environment. This gap is covered by the last book of Müller-Wille and Rheinberger. Kay’s book refers mainly to the efforts to crack the genetic code and does not go back in time to the conditions that prepared the genesis of genetics. ↩︎
- For this most contemporary piece of the history of genetics and for the relationships it developed with cybernetics, see genetics / cybernetics: a white wedding, Cyborg, vol. 7. ↩︎
- It is not a rare phenomenon. The very concept of (natural) “law” initially had political and social meanings (and legal ones, as the word itself indicates) and later found a place in physics and the positive sciences. In ancient Greek literature, moreover, law meant mainly the social contract, social customs and traditions, and was often perceived as opposed to nature (particularly by the sophists). But that is another discussion. ↩︎
- It had resonance even among many on the left. It was the well-known Kautsky who had proposed that “natural selection” should finally be replaced by “artificial selection.” For most leftists, however, negative eugenics (which included sterilizations and exterminations in its repertoire) was out of the question. What interested them most was positive eugenics, that is, the creation of those conditions that would allow the working class to improve itself and also contribute to the health of the nation. The rhetoric about health (defined and guided from above, of course) was self-evident. ↩︎
- The word “generation” then began to acquire its present meaning, which refers to the members of a species living at the same historical moment. Previously, it had the meaning of “creation.” ↩︎
- The fact that the profoundly utopian element inherent in various versions of liberalism typically goes unnoticed and uncommented upon by those who otherwise appear excessively eager to level the accusation against Marxism that it constitutes an earthly religion indicates that what essentially bothers them is the revolutionary potential it carries, rather than its metaphysical tendencies. Just as they become sensitive to the refugee issue only when these individuals have the “right” skin color, hair, and eyes, deploying theories of cultural racism, unaware that they are saying nothing new. They believe they are simply reproducing the latest word in the field of moral philosophy—since they also hold positions at universities, they must know something, right? In reality, they are merely rehashing the baggage of the white man in its cultural versions, that is, theories that are at least 150 years old. ↩︎
- For the social and political conditions under which the Belle Époque was born, see The Age of Empire 1875 – 1914, E. Hobsbawm, trans. K. Sklaveniti, pub. M.I.E.T., Dark Continent. The European 20th Century, M. Mazower, trans. K. Kourmenos, pub. Alexandria, The Pursuit of Power. Europe 1815 – 1914, R. Evans, trans. E. Asteriou, pub. Alexandria. ↩︎
- See G. Iggers, The Historiography in the 20th Century, trans. P. Matalas, Nefteli Publications. ↩︎
- This was a perception which found agreement among many leftists as well. ↩︎
- From the above, it should not be concluded that eugenics was identified with genetics. As fields, they were distinct; but not clearly distinct. Many geneticists were also eugenicists, although not always advocates of negative eugenics, such as Julian Huxley, who, although a supporter of eugenics, had strongly opposed the “racial biology” that was fashionable in Nazi Germany. In any case, what is important here is that genetics and eugenics, even if they did not fully coincide, shared a common ideological background and were born within the same political and social conditions. ↩︎
- There were, of course, voices of reaction even then against the paranoia of eugenics. We quote below in the original two excerpts from G. K. Chesterton’s book, Eugenics and Other Evils: An Argument Against the Scientifically Organized State, which “paradoxically” do not seem to have lost any of their relevance:
«Most Eugenists are Euphemists. I mean merely that short words startle them, while long words soothe them. And they are utterly incapable of translating the one into the other, however obviously they mean the same thing. Say to them “The persuasive and even coercive powers of the citizen should enable him to make sure that the burden of longevity in the previous generation does not become disproportionate and intolerable, especially to the females”; say this to them and they will sway slightly to and fro like babies sent to sleep in cradles. Say to them “Murder your mother,” and they sit up quite suddenly. Yet the two sentences, in cold logic, are exactly the same. Say to them “It is not improbable that a period may arrive when the narrow if once useful distinction between the anthropoid homo and the other animals, which has been modified on so many moral points, may be modified also even in regard to the important question of the extension of human diet”; say this to them, and beauty born of murmuring sound will pass into their face. But say to them, in a simple, manly, hearty way “Let’s eat a man!” and their surprise is quite surprising. Yet the sentences say just the same thing.
…
He [Mr. Wells] said the doctor should no longer be a mere plasterer of paltry maladies, but should be, in his own words, “the health adviser of the community.” The same can be expressed with even more point and simplicity in the proverb that prevention is better than cure. Commenting on this, I said that it amounted to treating all people who are well as if they were ill. This the writer admitted to be true, only adding that everyone is ill. To which I rejoin that if everyone is ill the health adviser is ill too, and therefore cannot know how to cure that minimum of illness. This is the fundamental fallacy in the whole business of preventive medicine. Prevention is not better than cure. Cutting off a man’s head is not better than curing his headache; it is not even better than failing to cure it. And it is the same if a man is in revolt, even a morbid revolt. Taking the heart out of him by slavery is not better than leaving the heart in him, even if you leave it a broken heart. Prevention is not only not better than cure; prevention is even worse than disease. Prevention means being an invalid for life, with the extra exasperation of being quite well.»
– https://www.gutenberg.org/files/25308/25308-h/25308-h.htm
– https://librivox.org/eugenics-by-chesterton ↩︎ - It is worth noting here, however, that within biomedical circles, objections are now being openly raised regarding the usefulness of the concept of “gene.” Some of the scientists involved have even expressed the view that perhaps this word should be abandoned (or its use drastically limited). See From Mendel to epigenetics: History of genetics, J. Gayon, Comptes Rendus Biologies, 2016. ↩︎