Chapter 4 - Eugenics and The Science of Genetics

Eugenics and the Science of Genetics
Oxford Handbooks Online

Nils Roll‐Hansen
The Oxford Handbook of the History of Eugenics
Edited by Alison Bashford and Philippa Levine
Print Publication Date: Sep 2010 Subject: History, Social and Cultural History
Online Publication Date: Sep 2012 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195373141.013.0005
Abstract and Keywords
This article deals with the history of eugenics, which started as a science-based
movement to combat threatening degeneration. It was initiated by idealistic scientists
and was inspired by a humanistic Enlightenment ideal of science as the servant of human
welfare. The general goal was to improve the biological heredity of human populations.
The article considers the main scientific input to the birth of eugenics and looks at the
Darwinian theory of evolution. Furthermore, it deals with the distinction between positive
and negative eugenics that is central to eugenic policy discussions. It further discusses
the dispute between eugenics and genetics that raised the possibility that race crossings
could produce genetically unbalanced and thus inferior hybrids. Finally, it concludes with
some implications that make the best out of eugenics by establishing effective democratic
political control of its practical applications.
Keywords: eugenics, science-based movement, Darwinian theory, genetics, race
EUGENICS as an ideology and a social movement emerged in the late nineteenth century
inspired by worries about human degeneration under the impact of industrialization and
modern urban living. The movement drew its scientific concepts and its scientific
authority from the newly established Darwinian theory of evolution, which supported a
naturalistic view of humankind. Human beings were seen as an integral part of living
nature, descended from the same ancestors as other animals, and subject to the same
causal laws. In particular, the same mechanism of evolution by natural selection applied
to humans as to other living organisms, with the important caveat that “natural” be
interpreted in a broad sense, including not only physical and biological but also social
factors, like sexual selection. The effects of human breeding on plants and animals played
a central role in Darwin's argument in On the Origin of Species. This naturalism implied
that helping weak and disadvantaged individuals to live and reproduce would promote
degeneration, suppressing the elimination of dysfunctional properties via natural
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selection. However, the real impact of such degeneration, which many understood to be
created by the new institutions of social and medical assistance, was highly dependent on
mechanisms of biological heredity, still mostly unknown at the turn of the century.
Whether such degeneration would appear in a couple of generations or take hundreds of
years to become a serious problem was unknowable without a more precise
understanding of heredity itself.
The last decades of the nineteenth and the first decade of the twentieth century saw
revolutionary new discoveries about the structure and function of the cells that make up
all living organisms. In particular, the behavior of the intracellular bodies called
chromosomes attracted much attention because they seemed so closely linked (p. 81) to
reproduction and heredity. At the same time, studies of variation and experience in
breeding, especially plant breeding, suggested that Darwin's ideas about heredity were
radically inadequate. From the new understanding of life processes on the microscopic
level, along with the practical experiences of a vigorously expanding modern agriculture,
grew the new science of genetics—classical genetics, as it is usually called. Its basic
principles were fully formed by around 1915.1 But it took another couple of decades
before the ideas of biological heredity were generally accepted by the broader community
of biological scientists. The pre-genetic orthodox Darwinian conceptions of heredity thus
continued to play an important role in popular thinking as well as political decision-
making well into the middle of the twentieth century.
Eugenics started as a science-based movement to combat threatening degeneration. It

was initiated by idealistic scientists and was inspired by a humanistic Enlightenment
ideal of science as the servant of human welfare, in which the general goal was to
improve the biological heredity of human populations. In the abstract this appeared as a
good and unobjectionable aim—provided the means were acceptable. Before the 1930s
and the traumatic experiences of Nazi population policies, the word “eugenics” had
mostly positive connotations. Even the Catholic Church accepted eugenic policies, as long
as there was no unacceptable interference with natural biological processes through
abortion, sterilization, prohibition of marriage, or contraceptive techniques.2 There was
broad acceptance that the knowledge of genetics and other biological science should
inform social policy.
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Evolution and the Problem of Heredity

The emergence of classical genetics in the early twentieth century radically changed the
theory of evolution by natural selection. According to Darwin's theory the advantages that
certain kinds of variation offer in the struggle to survive and procreate is the driving
force in the evolution of species. Individuals with the most advantageous properties are
“selected” as parents for the next generation. But to have an effect on the following
generations the properties had to be inherited, and Darwin lacked an adequate theory of
variation and heredity. He held on to a traditional theory of pangenesis formulated by
Hippocrates and others. As Paul and Moore elaborate in their chapter in this volume, the
hereditary material transmitted to the progeny consisted of particles (“gemmules”) from
all parts of the parent organism. This collection of particles provided the starting point
for developing similar parts and properties in the new individual.
Heredity on the individual level was an obvious phenomenon, but it also appeared as
capricious and unpredictable. Sometimes characteristic traits of a parent would reemerge
in its child, at other times not. And sometimes it would be the characteristic of a more or
less distant forebear that showed up. How was this apparent arbitrariness to be
explained? Was there a basis in some kind of causal regularity?
The nature and source of variation between individuals, in particular between

(p. 82)
parents and offspring, was another pressing question. Not all characteristic variation was
inherited. Was there an underlying difference between hereditary and non-hereditary
variation? Some variations appeared as adaptations to environmental influence or
demand. The same kind of plant would look very different when grown in humid and in
dry climates, or at sea level and in the high mountains. To what extent, if at all, were such
differences inherited? And what would the underlying mechanism be? The French
biologist Jean Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829) thought that the adaptations of the
individual organism to meet the challenges of its environment were in part hereditary,
and a main source of evolutionary change. Darwin introduced natural selection as a
crucial mechanism in the evolution of species.3 Yet he retained Lamarck's idea that
individual adaptation was a major source of hereditary variation. Indeed this idea of
inheritance of acquired characters—Lamarckism, as it is still called—took on increasing
importance in consecutive editions of Origin of Species.
The inadequacy of traditional theories of pangenesis became more and more obvious as
microscopic biology developed through the second half of the nineteenth century. The
new knowledge about cells, their interaction, and their internal structure led to a
revolution in the understanding of biological heredity. The Dutch botanist Hugo de Vries
(1848–1935) believed in hereditary particles, but not that they moved between cells. He
called his theory “intracellular pangenesis.” Francis Galton advanced the idea of a
“stirp,” or rootstock, of underlying hereditary material running through the generations.
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Each individual developed directly from the stirp and varied according to prevailing local
conditions, while the stirp remained unaffected by these variations.
The germ-line theory of August Weismann (1834–1914) was another alternative to

pangenesis and to Lamarckian inheritance of acquired characters. He observed that sex
organs in animals grew directly from the zygote (the fertilized egg-cell), in contrast to the
other specialized cells of the organism. This germ-line runs through the generations
without being influenced by the other cell of the organism, the soma. Weismann tested
this conclusion by simple experiments, for example, cutting off the tails of mice through
many generations, to no effect. He also developed an elaborate theory of embryological
development built on discoveries of the 1880s and 1890s about the behavior of the
chromosomes. He saw differentiation as a result of cells receiving different kinds of
hereditary particles. This fit well with the germ-lines observed in animals, but not with
the well-known botanical phenomenon that whole new individuals could be reproduced
asexually from many different parts of a plant, so-called cloning.
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The New Science of Genetics

It was the discovery that phenomena of inheritance could best be explained by underlying
stable factors that laid the foundation of genetics, what Ernst Mayr (1904–2005) called
“hard” heredity.4 Already in the 1860s, Gregor Mendel (1822–1884) (p. 83) had proposed
that law-like inheritance in plants of such properties as color and form of seed or flowers
were determined by factors transmitted unchanged through the generations. But his
discovery was little known and generally disregarded until it was rediscovered in 1900.
Mendel's idea was contrary to Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, which
assumed that heredity changed continuously, both through time and in each character of
the organism. This meant that hereditary variation in all directions was always available
for the force of natural selection to sculpt biological form, adapting it to the demands of
environment. By the end of the nineteenth century, this belief in evolution based on
continuous variation in heredity was sharply challenged.
The pugnacious British biologist William Bateson (1861–1926) criticized the so-called
biometricians, in particular the physicist and mathematician Karl Pearson (1857–1936)
and the zoologist Frank Raphael Weldon (1860–1906), for their belief in continuous
variation of heredity. In 1894 Bateson published a collection of Materials for the Study of
Variation to show that variation had to be discontinuous. And in 1900 he quickly picked
up the rediscovery of Mendel's laws and soon became the most influential propagandist
for the new science of heredity.5 He was the first to use the term “genetics” publicly (in
1906). Likewise, de Vries experimented with selection of specific botanical characters,
like the number of petals in a flower or rows of seed on a corncob, and found that
hereditary variation was not continuous. He concluded that in well-defined and
homogeneous varieties, also called “elementary species,” heredity was generally fixed.
New elementary species arose occasionally through sudden change, claimed de Vries. His
term for this phenomenon, “mutation,” became the hallmark of hereditary discontinuity in
the new science of genetics, though de Vries's own explanation was soon abandoned.6 In
support of the mutation theory he pointed to recent experience in plant breeding: the
method of mass selection, substituting human demands for environmental pressure, often
failed when specific goals were sought, for instance increased winter-hardiness of wheat,
or stiffer straw in barley. New and more successful methods of pedigree breeding were
developed, recognizing the presence of multiple stable types within an apparently
homogeneous population.7
Classical genetics was established by extending explanation in terms of hard heredity

throughout the plant and animal world, to quantitative as well as qualitative characters. A
full-fledged genetic theory was achieved when a group of fruit fly geneticists led by
American embryologist Thomas Hunt Morgan (1866–1945) succeeded in mapping specific
factors responsible for determining characters onto the chromosomes. They produced a
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theoretical synthesis in their modest, lucid, and epoch-making monograph, The

Mechanism of Mendelian Heredity, in 1915.8
A clear and experimentally operational distinction between genotype and phenotype was
essential to this achievement, that is, between the underlying biological type and the
concrete shape of individuals under varying environmental conditions. Danish botanist
Wilhelm Johannsen (1857–1927) introduced and defined the terms “genotype” and
“phenotype” in 1909, building on an experiment selecting for weight and shape of bean
seed.9 His clever move was to use pure lines, that is, populations (p. 84) descending from
a single individual. In self-fertilizing organisms like beans, such in-breeding populations
are genetically highly uniform. Latching onto the controversy between de Vries and the
biometricians, he wanted to test how much of the phenotypic variation is inherited. In
contradiction to the biometricians, he found no inheritance in the case of self-fertilizing
pure lines. Galton's contrary result with sweet peas, a plant with a similarly sexually
reproductive biology to that of beans, was simply a result of using genetically non-
homogeneous material. Galton had selected from a population that contained many lines
with different heredity, Johannsen explained.10 In this elegant way, Johannsen was able
precisely to separate hereditary variation, with evolutionary and breeding relevance,
from mere phenotypic variation. His theory of a stable genotype was soon extended to
selection experiments in cross-breeding and genetically non-homogeneous lines of
organisms like corn and chicken.11
The experimental demonstration of hard heredity, the stability of genotype, had two
important implications: there was neither continuous change in heredity nor inheritance
of individually acquired character. According to Johannsen's interpretation, strictly
continuous variation was only found on the phenotypic level, where an incalculable
number of environmental factors contributed to the formation of the individual organism.
Nevertheless, continuous versus discontinuous hereditary variation continued for a long
time to be a key question in the theoretical debates among geneticists. As late as 1916,
William Castle (1867–1962), one of the founding fathers of genetics in America, argued
that elementary hereditary factors were subject to continuous change.
However, in other areas of biology—embryology, systematics, ecology, paleontology—the

inheritance of acquired characters was still widely considered to be an important basic
alternative to the principles of classical genetics as late as the 1930s and 1940s. And the
possibility that there existed such mechanisms with significance for evolution as well as
practical breeding was recognized throughout the twentieth century. Reports that such
inheritance had been observed continued to attract much interest. The great political
scandal of twentieth-century science—the suppression of classical genetics in the Soviet
Union from the 1930s to the 1960s—was inspired by reports of this kind, which turned
out to be largely illusory.12 Indeed, to date, a number of molecular mechanisms have been
discovered that can support inheritance of acquired characters for one or a few
generations and thus play a significant role in evolution. Contrary to “the central dogma”
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of early molecular genetics, information can to some extent flow from phenotype to
genome (genotype).13
Rising Genetic Criticism of Eugenics

The main scientific input to the birth of eugenics was the Darwinian theory of evolution.
But originally this had a thin, even nonexistent explanation of the actual mechanism of
heredity. There was plenty of room for popular, common-sensical, (p. 85) and even
mythical ideas about human inheritance, to be linked to evolutionary ideas generally, and
eugenics specifically. Only with the development of a coherent and substantial theory of
classical genetics in the second decade of the twentieth century did a reliable scientific
basis for criticism of popular eugenic ideas start to develop. Historian Daniel Kevles
introduced the terms “mainline” and “reform” eugenics to distinguish the early racist,
anti-feminist, and authoritarian trend from the liberal and democratic social and
population policies that were developed through the 1920s and 1930s, consciously based
on the new science of genetics, that came to be supported by liberal and left-wing
geneticists toward the end of that period.14 Yet “mainline” and “reform” eugenics
continued to exist side by side for decades. There was no rapid transition from one to the
other, but rather a gradual shift.15
In the early twentieth century many pioneers of classical genetics joined eugenic
organizations.16 The American Breeders Association was for some time both the main
scientific society for genetic science and a primary promoter of eugenic ideas in the
United States. T. H. Morgan, for instance, was a member of the association's Committee
on Animal Breeding, but by 1915 reacted strongly against what he regarded as loose and
outdated genetic speculation. He criticized “the reckless statements and the unreliability
of a good deal that is said” in the association's Journal of Heredity, arguing that such
claims could be used to support tempting goals with untenable arguments and inefficient
means.17
By the beginning of World War I, there was widespread and growing concern among
professors of biology and medicine in the United States that “hasty and ill-advised
legislation” could result from “eugenic zeal without sufficient eugenic knowledge.”18 The
same worries were developing among liberal and left-wing scientists in Europe. Their
criticism came to have a strong restraining impact on eugenic legislative proposals
concerning marriage and sterilization in the 1920s and 1930s.19
An example of a geneticist and medical doctor who picked up the genetic criticism of
mainline eugenics at an early stage and pursued it into the complex international
struggles over science and politics during the period around World War II was Otto Lous
Mohr (1886–1967). In 1915 he sharply attacked Jon Alfred Mjøen (1860–1939),
pharmacist and leader of the popular eugenics movement in Norway, a man active in
international eugenic organizations. Mohr claimed that Mjøen was a dilettante in
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genetics, and that his proposal for eugenic policies lacked a factual scientific basis and
would likely produce more harm than good. His attack effectively marginalized Mjøen and
mainline eugenics in Norway. Mohr's combination of advanced scientific knowledge and
liberal social engagement made him an influential actor in local eugenic and sterilization
politics.20 Studies of cytology in Belgium and genetics with the Morgan group introduced
him to the international network of geneticists. As chair of the Permanent International
Committee of Genetics, he later played a crucial role in relocating the Seventh
International Congress of Genetics from Moscow to Edinburgh, when he and his
colleagues found the tightening of political control of science accompanying the start of
Stalinist purges in 1936 incompatible with traditional (p. 86) scientific autonomy and
freedom. They were fighting scientific obscurantism on two fronts: communist
Lamarckism on one, and Nazi mainline eugenics on the other.21
The distinction between positive and negative eugenics was central to eugenic policy
discussions. Judgments about good and desirable as well as bad and undesirable
inheritance differed greatly and it was hard to agree on general criteria, except in one
area: genetically derived illness and severe disability. The simple idea of negative
eugenics was that if people with such ailments did not have children, the occurrence of
these ailments would decrease in coming generations. However, the appealing idea of
combating hereditary illness through negative eugenics soon started to fade in the face of
growing genetic knowledge. If the cause of an ailment was recessive rather than
dominant, it would take generations to achieve a significant effect. It was a simple
calculation of elementary Mendelian theory that if 1 percent of the population suffered
from a condition caused by one recessive gene, around 10 percent would have a single
gene of the same kind and only about 20 percent of the unwanted genes would be
eliminated if those suffering from the ailment produced no offspring. As most kinds of
hereditary illness and disability have a frequency much less than 1 percent, and as it
gradually became clear that these are mainly recessive, negative eugenics lost its
attraction. Proponents nevertheless continued to argue that a reduction on the order of
10 percent per generation was important. They pointed to what was then called
feeblemindedness (mental retardation), which was assumed to affect about 1 percent of
the population and likely to be due to one recessive gene.22
Old fears of hereditary degeneration were also dispelled by the new concepts and
theories of genetics. The stability of the genes and the understanding of their
fundamental difference from individually developed characters—only the former were
transmitted to offspring—gradually dispelled ideas about the causes and mechanisms of
degeneration. The lack of demographic data to demonstrate progressive racial
degeneration confirmed that the fear had been exaggerated.23
The fundamental distinction between genotype and phenotype implied that environment
was as indispensable and fundamental to the development of an individual as heredity. It
also soon became clear that there is no one-to-one relationship between hereditary
factors and the characters of the organism. The relation is complex, with each gene
affecting many characters and each character being affected by many genes. This had
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been clearly stated in The Mechanism of Mendelian Heredity, which Morgan and his
students published in 1915. Empirical population studies, like those of Russian-American
geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky (1900–1975), demonstrated the great genetic diversity
and variability of natural populations.24 Theoretical population genetics developed formal
tools to analyze complex interactions between genes and environment in evolution.
Nevertheless, the ideas of a “unit character” and “gene for” continued to flourish,
especially in popular discourse on genetics. The persistence of such terminology suggests
that simple determinism may still be widespread in the early twenty-first century.
It took time for the new picture of human heredity to become clearly developed in
(p. 87)
genetic science and even longer to make an impact on popular and political thinking. The
mid-twentieth century saw two major reactionary movements in which traditional popular
conceptions of heredity inspired political suppression and perversion of genetic science:
Nazi population policies in Germany, and Lysenkoist “genetics” in the Soviet Union.
Genetics versus Racism

The racism of mainline eugenics referred to pre-genetic physical anthropology and
evolutionary theory. The validity of such scientific support had been contested already
before the turn of the century, for instance by the German-American anthropologist Franz
Boas (1858–1942).25 Criticism of racism from the new science of genetics developed
gradually during the 1910s and 1920s, and was radically sharpened in response to Nazi
ideology and population policies in the 1930s.
After World War I, the idea that some races have a general genetical superiority to others
had lost plausibility in scientific debates. But the possibility was raised that race
crossings could produce genetically unbalanced and thus inferior hybrids. This became a
central topic in the dispute between eugenics and genetics. At the 1921 International
Congress of Eugenics in New York, Jon Alfred Mjøen attracted considerable public
attention when he argued that race interbreeding might lead to offspring with physical
and mental qualities that were not well balanced. He pointed to his own experiments with
rabbits, where offspring had a mixture of upright and hanging ears, as well as to the
“deplorable” social conditions of mixed Nordic and Sami families. This fed into an existing
American debate spearheaded by Charles Davenport (1866–1944).26 But not all American
geneticists concurred with Davenport. William Castle criticized Mjøen for neglecting
social inheritance. “Much that is the best in human existence is a matter of social
inheritance, not biological,” argued Castle, concluding, “so far as biological
considerations are concerned, there is no race problem in the United States.”27
Davenport, in a study on Race Crossing in Jamaica (1929), had found only scant evidence
of disharmony in physical characters, but still claimed that mental ones could be
important. His study was severely criticized by Karl Pearson (1857–1936) for its statistical
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methods. Davenport gave no convincing reasons for assuming a specific genetic basis for
mental imbalances, and other genetic and anthropological studies of the period found no
significant physical disharmonies.28
Sharp public criticism of mainline eugenic policies and proposals emerged in the 1930s,
spearheaded by leading experts on genetics and evolution, including Americans like
Herbert Jennings (1868–1947) and Nobel Prize winner Hermann J. Muller (1890–1967),
Britons like J. B. S. Haldane (1892–1964), Julian Huxley (1887–1975), and Lancelot
Hogben (1895–1975), as well as Scandinavians such as Gunnar (p. 88) Dahlberg (1893–
1956) and Otto Lous Mohr. Less well-known outside scientific circles, but very important
in the long run, was the work of Lionel Penrose (1898–1972) on the biological basis of
mental retardation. He displayed a detailed picture of how different kinds of mental
retardation depended on different environmental and hereditary factors. For these
progressive scientists, the racist politics emerging in Nazi Germany was a major political
threat, and it became a duty for politically conscious liberal and left-wing scientists to
reveal its lack of scientific validity.29
A Liberal Consensus
The intensity of geneticists' campaigns against the ideas of mainline eugenics grew with
the increasing political tensions in 1930s Europe. They sharply rejected the idea that
some human races are genetically superior to others, as well as the simple genetic
determinism that characterized mainline eugenics. They insisted that radical social
reforms, improvement of living conditions for the poor, and emancipation of women were
necessary to create a just society, but they were not opposed to eugenics in principle.
They believed in the possibility of important genetic improvement within populations in
the long run.
Such a view was expressed in the so-called “Geneticists' Manifesto” formulated by H. J.

Muller and signed by a representative group of leading American and European
geneticists in August 1939, as the Seventh International Congress of Genetics hurriedly
disbanded on the eve of World War II. The signatories included such leading critics of
older eugenics as Huxley, Haldane, Hogben, and Dahlberg. This document, entitled
“Social Biology and Population Improvement,” was a response to a survey by the Science
Service of Washington, D.C., which asked the explicitly eugenic question: “How could the
world's population be improved most effectively genetically?”30
The message of the geneticists was that radical reforms of social equality and justice
were needed before any kind of eugenic policy could become effective and truly
beneficial. The first step had to be a good physical and social environment for all. It was
not possible to “estimate and compare the intrinsic worth of different individuals…
without equal opportunities for all members of society.” And the elimination of
hereditarian prejudices against races or groups would not be possible until “the
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conditions which make for war and economic exploitation have been eliminated.” The
manifesto also called for protection and support for women to ensure that a woman's
“reproductive duties do not interfere too greatly with her opportunities to participate in
the life and work of the community at large.”31 The geneticists' manifesto illustrates how
liberal left-wing geneticists in 1939 gave first priority to a just social system. Only on this
basis could human genetics contribute to sound social policy. Social reform in the spirit of
social democratic movements across northern Europe was the primary need.
(p. 89)This critical attitude to contemporary eugenics was manifested in the nature of
the sterilization laws in the Scandinavian countries in the 1930s, characterized by strong
concern for the principle of voluntariness and the priority of social reforms.32 This was in
accordance with the views of geneticists such as Mohr and Dahlberg, who acted as
influential advisors to their respective governments in Norway and Sweden. They were
highly critical of the radical eugenic policies of the German Nazi regime, which enforced
sterilization on hereditarian criteria.
The 1934 Norwegian sterilization law is an example of the different place of genetic
criteria for sterilization in Nazi Germany and in Scandinavian social democracies. This
law permitted biological heredity as an acceptable reason for sterilization only when
there was danger of an affliction being directly transmitted to offspring. This was not a
eugenic justification in the strict sense, because it was not pursued with an entire
population in mind. It was an individual medical approach similar to that of medical
genetic counselling in the postwar period. The primary criterion of the Norwegian law
was social and not biological: lacking the ability to take care of children. This applied to
those with full legal right who applied for sterilization on their own behalf as well as to
those who were under guardianship of others due to mental retardation or insanity. Thus
the Norwegian law was directly contrary to the German law of 1933, which only allowed
sterilization on grounds of biological heredity: social grounds were illegal.33
Geneticists and the UNESCO Declaration on

Race
A strong and politically motivated anti-racism accompanied the formation of the United
Nations at the end of World War II. There was broad agreement among social as well as
natural scientists that the theories about hereditary differences between human races on
which Nazi ideology was based were untenable, and that preventing new racist
catastrophes meant making this clear, worldwide. The United Nations itself was
established in the hope of preventing future wars, while UNESCO's particular aim was to
harness and utilize educational and scientific means to achieve this end. This was the
context within which the two UNESCO declarations on race, in 1950 and 1951, were
forged. Inevitably, scientists' ideas differed on how best to achieve these ends. While the
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first declaration expressed a view widespread among social scientists, the second was
written and supported primarily by geneticists, and it offered a markedly different
approach to issues of race.34
The view of human heredity behind the first declaration is exemplified in physical
anthropologist Ashley Montague's Man's Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race,
which built on the critique of racism articulated by Franz Boas half a century earlier. The
purpose of Montague's book was to clarify “thinking upon an important (p. 90) subject
about which clear thinking is generally avoided.”35 He proposed to exchange the tainted
word “race” with “ethnic group,” defined in terms of what contemporary biologists knew
about races. Montague pronounced the old concept of race to be “meaningless.”36 Most
geneticists, however, took a different approach, arguing that popularizing existing
knowledge of genetics and its limited implications for human population policy was the
most effective protection against dangerous racist doctrines.
The 1947 book Heredity, Race and Society by geneticists Leslie Dunn and Theodosius
Dobzhansky was representative of the views behind the second UNESCO declaration on
race. Its opening claim was: “One of the most important facts about human beings is that
they are not all alike.” The geneticists claimed that it was essential to understand that
two fundamentally different factors caused human difference: the inherited and the
environmental. Dunn and Dobzhansky took for granted the existence of genetically
different human groups, traditionally called races, but stressed that there were no pure
races. They wholly rejected theories of biologically superior races, but argued that
abolishing the term “race” could as easily aggravate the political problem as solve it:
“Some have used ‘ethnic group’ in place of race; but unfortunately ‘ethnic group
prejudice’ is easily exchangeable for ‘race prejudice’; and one can hate ‘ethnic groups’
just as venomously as real or imaginary races.”37
An introductory note to the second UNESCO declaration explains that in the first
declaration “it was chiefly sociologists who gave their opinion…That statement had good
effect but it did not carry the authority of just those groups within whose special province
fall the biological problems of race.” In discussing the social and political implications of
genetics and evolution, this second statement used the word “race” without hesitation
and was open to the possibility of significant hereditary differences between human
races. Nevertheless, the second statement ended in political harmony with the first.
There was, it concluded, good support for “the view that genetic differences are of little
significance in determining the social and cultural differences between different groups
of men.” And there was “no evidence that race mixture produces disadvantageous results
from a biological point of view.”38
The difference between geneticists and social anthropologists persisted in UNESCO's

anti-racist activities. Dahlberg's UNESCO-sponsored educational pamphlet Raser och
Folk (Races and People) describes the different human races and their origin according to
genetic and evolutionary theory, denies the existence of a “higher” race, and ends with
current sociopolitical problems connected to increased immigration.39 Social scientists,
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on the other hand, showed little interest in popularizing modern scientific knowledge
about human heredity, instead challenging racism by arguing that current concepts of
race were scientifically unsound and politically obnoxious, and calling for rejection of the
word “race” altogether. For many social scientists, Boas's The Mind of Primitive Man
offered the key argument against eugenics. However, successive editions of this classic
work relied more on the “ancestral heredity” of nine (p. 91) teenth-century biometric
theory than on the classical genetics of the early twentieth century. Boas's essay lacked
the deeper scientific understanding of the nature/nurture question that the new concepts
of genotype, phenotype, and gene provided. In his foreword to a 1963 reprint, the
anthropologist Melville J. Herskovits (1895–1963), a central actor in UNESCO debates,
makes no mention that the essay was biologically outdated.40
Eugenics and Genetics in the 1950s and 1960s

The experience with Nazism radically reduced the attractiveness of eugenic policies.
Nonetheless, there was no sudden abandonment of eugenics after World War II. Moderate
non-racist versions continued in some contexts. It had been clear by the 1930s that
simple hereditary models, such as identifying one recessive gene as the cause of a wide
range of mental retardation, were untenable. But some moderate eugenicists like the
Swedish zoologist Nils von Hofsten (1881–1967), an influential government advisor on
eugenics, and the Danish human geneticist Tage Kemp (1896–1964), organizer of the first
international conference of human genetics in Copenhagen in 1956, still argued that
sterilization of the mentally retarded could have significant eugenic effect. These two
together with the Norwegian director of health services, Karl Evang (1902–1981),
continued to promote eugenic sterilization of the mentally retarded as late as the 1950s.
Within the medical profession, psychiatrists in particular held on to a strong genetic
determinism.41 But around 1960 the rapid development of human genetics, in particular
cytogenetics, made this view scientifically obsolete.42
By the 1960s the word “eugenics” had practically disappeared from public discourse. But
many scientists were still interested in the long-term steering of human evolution in a
spirit similar to that of the Geneticists' Manifesto of 1939. An example is the collection of
articles Control of Human Heredity and Evolution (1965) dedicated to the memory of
Herbert Jennings, “father of the genetics of unicellular organisms and leading educator of
the general public of his generation in the bearing of biological, and chiefly genetic,
knowledge on human affairs.”43 Among the contributors were Nobel Prize geneticists S.
E. Luria (1912–1991), Edward Tatum (1909–1975), and Muller. A comment on Muller's
talk on the future possibility of “genetic surgery,” or what we today call gene technology,
stressed how much more knowledge was needed before such technology would be
possible. Such detailed knowledge of the structure and function of “man's genetic
equipment” would “hardly be available in the twenty-first century, if ever.”44 A decade
Page 13 of 22

after the discovery of the structure of DNA, geneticists were careful in not promising
much advance in genetic engineering for the near future.
Page 14 of 22

Conclusion
The willingness of most German scientists, including geneticists, to cooperate in
(p. 92)
the extreme eugenic and racist population policies of the Nazi regime is one of the most
sinister phenomena of twentieth-century science. Only very few of the leaders of German
eugenics avoided the embrace of the Nazis.45 The voluntary partnership of science with a
totalitarian regime raises deep and troubling questions concerning the traditional
Enlightenment view of science. Can the idea of mutual support and alliance between
science and social progress in any way be saved? Around World War II, the scientific
tradition was widely perceived as the anchor of intellectual freedom and of a lasting
liberal democratic society. In recent years this view has been criticized as invalid, a
“naive and self-serving” idea by which scientists have promoted their own interest.46 In a
generally pessimistic survey of German anthropological and genetic science during the
Nazi period, Hans-Walter Schmuhl nevertheless ends on a cautiously optimistic note,
quoting Dostojewski on the difference between “true” and “untrue” scholarship.47
Strong claims about political influence on scientific views have been made in recent
decades. For instance, William Provine argued that between 1930 and 1950 geneticists
“did revise their biology to fit their feelings of revulsion” against Nazism. Earlier in the
century many scientists regarded wide race crosses as biologically harmful, and later
argued that they were “at worst biologically harmless.”48 This argument is not sufficiently
careful in distinguishing the strictly scientific claims from the political statements
geneticists made on the basis of this science. Indeed, this chapter points to strong
criticism of claims about harmfulness in the 1920s. Agnosticism appears to have been the
more common position among leading geneticists. Progress in genetic theory from the
1920s through the 1940s strengthened the criticism and supported claims to
harmlessness. The history of the UNESCO declarations of the early 1950s shows how
many geneticists held agnostic views on genetic differences between human races, and
reacted against political pressure to revise their scientific claims to suit an anti-racist
agenda. This resistance was at the core of their disagreement with social scientists.
Geneticists recognized that racism was a major political problem and that it was often
supported by “facts” without sound scientific foundation. But at the same time, most
scientists were not willing to make political compromises on what they agreed was sound
scientific knowledge.49
The discovery of the chemical structure of DNA in 1953 was the starting point of a
revolution in knowledge about heredity and development on the chemical level.
Nevertheless, classical genetics, with its methods of hybridization and selection
supported by cytological study of chromosomes, was the main basis of the most important
practical applications of genetics through the remainder of the twentieth century. The
greatest practical success was probably the green revolution in agriculture, which
culminated around the 1980s. Medical genetics, with prenatal diagnostics as a central
technology, has grown steadily in practical power and breadth of applications since the
Page 15 of 22

1970s, including increasingly sophisticated molecular methods. (p. 93) The molecular
“genetic surgery” that Muller speculated on in the mid-1960s has been introduced in the
chemical industry, for instance in the production of pharmaceuticals by manipulated
microorganisms. It is now making its way into the breeding of pest-resistant plants,
although it is still far from an effective chemical technology of human heredity.
The completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003 provided a general map of the
DNA sequences of the human genome. Popularizations of this great scientific
achievement sometimes give the impression that a map of an individual's DNA sequences
also maps the “genes” that determine her or his behavior, a situation that would open a
completely new situation not only for medical genetics but also for eugenics. In fact, the
map of the human genome has reinforced scientific awareness of the complexity of the
genome and its interaction with the rest of the organism, as well as with its external
environment. The idea of the gene as a DNA sequence is dissolving in the complexity of
the architecture and dynamics of the chemical machinery of the cell. This complexity does
not necessarily mean that utopias of genetic engineering, producing human designer
babies at will, can never be reached. It simply means that we still do not know how far it
is possible to develop practical methods in this direction.50
By the 1990s it was once more politically acceptable to argue that eugenics is not
necessarily a bad thing.51 It might even be an inevitable consequence of molecular
genetic knowledge that was growing much faster than the geneticists of the 1960s
believed. And we had better make the best out of it by establishing effective democratic
political control of its practical applications. Philosophers have emphasized how our
modern society appears to be faced with “Inescapable Eugenics.”52 They have argued
that the new genetic technologies force us to face truly eugenic problems, even if they
are not applied with eugenic purpose. The individual choices made by parents can
produce significant genetic changes at the population level. The social consequences of
these choices have to be addressed by this generation, as their predecessors tackled the
eugenic and genetic debates of the early to mid-twentieth century.53
Further Reading
Barkan, Elazar. The Retreat of Scientific Racism: Changing Concepts of Race in Britain
and the United States between the World Wars (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1992).
Broberg, Gunnar, and Nils Roll-Hansen, eds. Eugenics and the Welfare State: Sterilization
Policy in Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State
Buchanan, Allen, Dan W. Brock, Norman Daniels, and Daniel Wikler. From Chance to
Choice: Genetics and Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
Page 16 of 22

Jablonka, Eva, and Marion J. Lamb. Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic,
Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life (Cambridge, MA and London:
MIT Press, 2005).
Kevles, Daniel. In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity (New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985).
Ludmerer, Kenneth M. Genetics and American Society: A Historical Appraisal (Baltimore,

MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972).
Müller-Wille, Staffan, and Hans-Jörg Rheinberger. Vererbung: Geschichte und Kultur

eines biologischen Konzepts [Heredity: History and Culture of a Biological Concept]
(Frankfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 2009).
Paul, Diane B. The Politics of Heredity: Essays on Eugenics, Biomedicine, and the Nature-
Nurture Debate (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1998).
Weindling, Paul. Health, Race and German Politics between National Unification and
Nazism, 1870–1945 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
Notes:
(1.) For a general overview of genetics in its social context up to the twenty-first century,
see Staffan Müller-Wille and Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, Vererbung: Geschichte und Kultur
eines biologischen Konzepts [Heredity: History and Culture of a Biological Concept]
(Frankfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 2009; English translation under preparation).
(2.) Papal Encyclical, Casti connubii, 1930. See, for example, Daniel Kevles, In the Name
of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985),
119.
(3.) Darwin and Lamarck differed fundamentally over descent. According to Darwin,
present existing species had common forebears. Ultimately they had one or a few
ancestors in the form of simple, probably unicellular, organisms. According to Lamarck,
there was no branching “tree of evolution.” Each presently existing species represented
one line of evolution leading to more and more complex organisms. Simple organisms
continued to come into existence spontaneously from inorganic matter. Thus to Lamarck
the most complex species were the oldest, and the simplest were the youngest. See, for
example, Wolfgang Lefèvre, “Jean Baptiste Lamarck,” in Lexikon der bedeutenden
Naturwissenschaftler, eds. Dieter Hoffmann, Hubert Laitko, and Staffan Müller-Wille, 3
vols. (Heidelberg: Spektrum akademischer Verlag, 2003–2004), 2: 358–363.
(4.) See Ernst Mayr, “Prologue: Some Thoughts on the History of the Evolutionary
Synthesis,” in The Evolutionary Synthesis: Perspectives on the Unification of Biology, eds.
Page 17 of 22

Ernst Mayr and William B. Provine (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980), 1–
48.
(5.) W. Bateson, Mendel's Principles of Heredity: A Defence (Cambridge: University Press,

1902).
(6.) H. de Vries, Die Mutationstheorie [The theory of mutation], vol. 1 (Leipzig: Verlag von
Weit, 1901).
(7.) See, for instance, Nils Roll-Hansen, “Svalöf and the Origins of Classical Genetics,” in
Svalöf 1886–1986: Research and Results in Plant Breeding, ed. Gösta Olsson (Stockholm:
LTS Förlag, 1986), 35–43.
(8.) T. H. Morgan, A. H. Sturtevant, H. J. Muller, and C. B. Bridges, The Mechanism of

Mendelian Heredity (New York: Henry Holt, 1915).
(9.) Wilhelm Johannsen, Elemente der Exakten Erblichkeitslehre (Jena: Gustav Fischer,
1909).
(10.) Nils Roll-Hansen, “Sources of Wilhelm Johannsen's Genotype Theory,” Journal of the
History of Biology 42, no. 3 (2009): 457–493.
(11.) A milestone event was the presentation of Johannsen's genotype theory to the
American society of naturalists in December 1910. Wilhelm Johannsen, “The Genotype
Conception of Heredity,” American Naturalist 45, no. 531 (1911): 129–159.
(12.) See, for instance, Zhorez Medvedev, The Rise and Fall of T. D. Lysenko (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1969); David Joravsky, The Lysenko Affair (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1970); Valery Soyfer, Lysenko and the Tragedy of Soviet
Science (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1994); Nils Roll-Hansen, The
Lysenko Effect: The Politics of Science (Amherst, MA: Humanity Books, 2005).
(13.) Eva Jablonka and Marion J. Lamb, Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic,
Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life (Cambridge, MA and
London: MIT Press, 2005).
(14.) Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics, 172–175.
(15.) A politically important difference was the attitude toward racism. The genetic
superiority of Europeans was often taken for granted before World War I. But the
experience of war created a new social and political climate. Revolutionary demands for a
more just and egalitarian society forced a conscious reconsideration of the meaning and
implications of race differences.
(16.) Kenneth M. Ludmerer, Genetics and American Society: A Historical Appraisal

(Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972), 34–43.
Page 18 of 22

(17.) Quoted in Garland Allen, Thomas Hunt Morgan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1972), 229.
(18.) Lewellys F. Barker, “Foreword,” in Eugenics: Twelve University Lectures (New York:
Dodd, Mead, 1914), xi.
(19.) Øyvind Giæver, “Marriage and Madness: Expert Advice and the Eugenic Issue in
Twentieth Century Norwegian Marriage Legislation,” Science Studies 16, no. 1 (2003): 3–
21; Nils Roll-Hansen, “Norwegian Eugenics: Sterilization as Social Reform,” and
“Conclusion: Scandinavian Eugenics in the International Context,” in Eugenics and the
Welfare State: Sterilization Policy in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland, eds.
Gunnar Broberg and Nils Roll-Hansen, 2nd ed. (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State
University Press, 2005), 151–194, 259–271.
(20.) Roll-Hansen, “Norwegian Eugenics,” 158–160, 169–175.
(21.) Roll-Hansen, The Lysenko Effect, 230–243.
(22.) For a broad presentation of debates about eugenics and recessive heredity through
the first decades of the twentieth century, see Diane B. Paul, “Did Eugenics Rest on an
Elementary Mistake?” in Diane B. Paul, The Politics of Heredity: Essays on Eugenics,
Biomedicine, and the Nature-Nurture Debate (Albany, NY: State University of New York
Press, 1998), 117–132.
(23.) See, for example, Roll-Hansen, “Norwegian Eugenics,” 156–158.
(24.) Mark B. Adams, ed., The Evolution of Theodosius Dobzhansky (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1994).
(25.) Franz Boas, “Human Faculty as Determined by Race,” Proceedings of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, 43rd Annual Meeting 1894, (Salem: Fredric
W. Putnam, 1895), 301–327; Boas, “The Mind of Primitive Man,” Science 13, no. 321 (22
February 1901): 281–289.
(26.) William B. Provine, “Geneticists and the Biology of Race Crossing,” Science 182, no.
4114 (23 November 1973): 790–796.
(27.) W. E. Castle, “Biological and Social Consequences of Race-Crossing,” Journal of

Heredity 15, no. 9 (1924): 365–366.
(28.) Provine, “Geneticists and the Biology of Race Crossing,” 793–794.
(29.) For a general account and analysis of this development see Barkan, Retreat of
Scientific Racism, and Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics. For a contemporary testimony,
see Gunnar Dahlberg, Race, Reason and Rubbish (London: Allen & Unwin, 1942). The
book was first published in Swedish in 1940 and translated into English by Lancelot
Page 19 of 22

Hogben when he was forced by the German invasion of Norway in April 1940 to flee to
Sweden and had to wait for passage through Russia back to England.
(30.) “Social Biology and Population Improvement,” Nature 144, no. 3646 (16 September
1939): 521–522.
(31.) Ibid.
(32.) These laws were passed by overwhelming parliamentary majorities. In Norway there
was one vote against, in Sweden and Denmark a very small minority. This meant that the
laws included some amount of compromise to appease eugenics enthusiasts.
(33.) The situation was similar in Sweden. Thus Peter Weingart's “Science and Political
Culture: Eugenics in Comparative Perspective,” Scandinavian Journal of History 24, no. 2
(1999): 163–177, presents a distorted picture of the situation in Sweden in the 1930s and
1940s when he writes (173) that there was “a virtual identity of the eugenic and race-
hygiene discourse in Sweden and Germany as well as a striking similarity in the
sterilization practice.” A similarly misleading picture has been widespread in recent
historiography of eugenics. See Broberg and Roll-Hansen, Eugenics and the Welfare
State, preface.
(34.) For analysis of the role of genetic science, see Stefan Kühl, Die Internationale der
Rassisten. Aufstieg und Niedergang der internationalen Bewegung für Eugenik und
Rassenhygiene im 20. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt/Main: Campus Verlag, 1997); Jean Gayon,
“Do Biologists Need the Expression ‘Human Races?’ UNESCO 1950–51,” in Bioethical
and Ethical Issues Surrounding the Trials and Code of Nuremberg, ed. Jacques J.
Rozenberg (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2003); Staffan Müller-Wille, “Race et
appartenance ethnique: La diversité humaine et l'UNESCO. Les Déclarations sur la race
1950 et 1951,” in UNESCO, 60 ans d'histoire de l'UNESCO. Actes du colloque
international, Paris, 16–18 novembre 2005 Maison de l'UNESCO, Paris (Paris: UNESCO
2007), 211–220. Jean Gayon, “Commentaire,” ibid., 223–227.
(35.) M. F. A. Montague, Man's Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race, 2nd ed. (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1945), ix.
(36.) Montague's argument was based on a radically empiricist philosophy of science

insisting that theoretical concepts be directly derived from observed facts.
(37.) L. C. Dunn and Theodosius Dobzhansky, Heredity, Race, and Society (New York:
Penguin Books, 1947), 94.
(38.) See “Race,” in Encyclopedia of Human Rights, ed. Edward Lawson, 2nd ed.
(Washington, DC: Taylor & Francis, 1996), 1217.
(39.) Gunnar Dhalberg, Raser och Folk [Races and People] (Stockholm: Ehlins, 1955).
Page 20 of 22

(40.) Melville J. Herskovits, “Foreword,” in Franz Boas, The Mind of Primitive Man
(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1963), 5–12. Boas's essay was first published in 1911
and reprinted a number of times. A German version, Kultur und Rasse, was published in
1914, and a thoroughly revised English version in 1938.
(41.) Nils Roll-Hansen, “Eugenic Sterilization and the Role of Science: The Scandinavian
Case,” in Legacies of Modernism: Art and Politics in Northern Europe, 1890–1950, eds.
Patrizia C. McBride, Richard W. McCormick, and Monika Zagar (New York: Palgrave,
2007), 72–74.
(42.) L. C. Dunn, “Cross Currents in the History of Human Genetics,” American Journal of
Human Genetics 14, no. 1 (1962): 1–13.
(43.) T. M. Sonneborn, ed., The Control of Human Heredity and Evolution (New York:
Macmillan, 1965).
(44.) Ibid., 125.
(45.) Hermann Muckermann was one exception. He was a practicing Catholic who had
been forced out of eugenic research and teaching by the Nazis; he continued to pursue a
scientific humanism after the end of World War II. See Hans Ebert, “Hermann
Muckermann, Profil eines Theologen, Widerstandskämpfers und Hochschullehrers der
Technischen Universität Berlin,” Humanismus und Technik 20, no. 1 (1976): 29–40.
(46.) Carola Sachse and Mark Walker, “Introduction: A Comparative Perspective,” in

Osiris 20, 2nd series, Politics and Science in Wartime: Comparative International
Perspectives on the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute (2005): 1–20. They wrote: “Our collective
analysis also reinforces the recent rejection of the naive and self-serving, or alternatively
arrogant and conceited, belief that science flourishes best, or even can only really
flourish, in a Western-style liberal democracy” (17). The rejected view is exemplified by
quotations from the sociologist of science Robert Merton.
(47.) Hans-Walter Schmuhl, Grenzüberschreitungen: Das Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für

Anthropologie, menschliche Erblehre und Eugenik 1927–1945 (Göttingen: Wallstein
Verlag, 2005), 541.
(48.) Provine, “Geneticists and the Biology of Race Crossing,” 796.
(49.) This was essential, for instance, in the “ethics of knowledge” that the French
molecular geneticist Jacques Monod formulated as his response to Marxist theories about
science in the 1960s. Jacques Monod, Le hasard et la necessité, essai sur la philosophie
naturelle de la biologie moderne (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1970), 52.
(50.) Michel Morange, The Misunderstood Gene (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2001). Müller-Wille and Rheinberger, Vererbung, chap. 8.
Page 21 of 22

(51.) See for instance, Arthur Caplan, Glenn McGee, and David Magnus, “What Is
Immoral about Eugenics?” British Medical Journal 319, no. 7220 (13 November 1999):
1284.
(52.) Philip Kitcher, The Lives to Come: The Genetic Revolution and Human Possibilities
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997), chap. 8.
(53.) Diane B. Paul, Controlling Human Heredity: 1865 to the Present (Atlantic Highlands,
NJ: Humanities Press, 1995), 132–135; Allen Buchanan, Dan W. Brock, Norman Daniels,
and Daniel Wikler, From Chance to Choice: Genetics and Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge
Nils Roll‐Hansen
Nils Roll-Hansen is Professor Emeritus of History and Philosophy of Science at the

University of Oslo. He has published on Pasteur and spontaneous generation, the
origins of classical Mendelian genetics, plant breeding, environmental science, and
eugenics. The Lysenko Effect: The Politics of Science (2005) investigates how certain
science policy doctrines undermined the rationality and autonomy of science.
Eugenics and the Welfare State (1995, 2005), coedited with Gunnar Broberg,
investigates eugenics and sterilization policy in Scandinavia. Major present interests
include the formation of classical genetics around 1900, and the importance of
distinguishing basic and applied research in the politics of science.
Page 22 of 22

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Eugenics and the Science of Genetics

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Abstract and Keywords

Keywords: eugenics, science-based movement, Darwinian theory, genetics, race

Subscriber: University of Glasgow; date: 29 April 2018

Eugenics started as a science-based movement to combat threatening degeneration. It

Subscriber: University of Glasgow; date: 29 April 2018

Evolution and the Problem of Heredity

The nature and source of variation between individuals, in particular between

Subscriber: University of Glasgow; date: 29 April 2018

The germ-line theory of August Weismann (1834–1914) was another alternative to

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The New Science of Genetics

Classical genetics was established by extending explanation in terms of hard heredity

Subscriber: University of Glasgow; date: 29 April 2018

theoretical synthesis in their modest, lucid, and epoch-making monograph, The

However, in other areas of biology—embryology, systematics, ecology, paleontology—the

Subscriber: University of Glasgow; date: 29 April 2018

Rising Genetic Criticism of Eugenics

Subscriber: University of Glasgow; date: 29 April 2018

Subscriber: University of Glasgow; date: 29 April 2018

Genetics versus Racism

Subscriber: University of Glasgow; date: 29 April 2018

Such a view was expressed in the so-called “Geneticists' Manifesto” formulated by H. J.

Subscriber: University of Glasgow; date: 29 April 2018

Geneticists and the UNESCO Declaration on

Subscriber: University of Glasgow; date: 29 April 2018

The difference between geneticists and social anthropologists persisted in UNESCO's

Subscriber: University of Glasgow; date: 29 April 2018

Eugenics and Genetics in the 1950s and 1960s

Subscriber: University of Glasgow; date: 29 April 2018

Subscriber: University of Glasgow; date: 29 April 2018

Subscriber: University of Glasgow; date: 29 April 2018

Subscriber: University of Glasgow; date: 29 April 2018

Ludmerer, Kenneth M. Genetics and American Society: A Historical Appraisal (Baltimore,

Müller-Wille, Staffan, and Hans-Jörg Rheinberger. Vererbung: Geschichte und Kultur

Subscriber: University of Glasgow; date: 29 April 2018

(5.) W. Bateson, Mendel's Principles of Heredity: A Defence (Cambridge: University Press,

(8.) T. H. Morgan, A. H. Sturtevant, H. J. Muller, and C. B. Bridges, The Mechanism of

(14.) Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics, 172–175.

(16.) Kenneth M. Ludmerer, Genetics and American Society: A Historical Appraisal

Subscriber: University of Glasgow; date: 29 April 2018

(20.) Roll-Hansen, “Norwegian Eugenics,” 158–160, 169–175.

(21.) Roll-Hansen, The Lysenko Effect, 230–243.

(23.) See, for example, Roll-Hansen, “Norwegian Eugenics,” 156–158.

(27.) W. E. Castle, “Biological and Social Consequences of Race-Crossing,” Journal of

(28.) Provine, “Geneticists and the Biology of Race Crossing,” 793–794.

Subscriber: University of Glasgow; date: 29 April 2018

(36.) Montague's argument was based on a radically empiricist philosophy of science

Subscriber: University of Glasgow; date: 29 April 2018

(44.) Ibid., 125.

(46.) Carola Sachse and Mark Walker, “Introduction: A Comparative Perspective,” in

(47.) Hans-Walter Schmuhl, Grenzüberschreitungen: Das Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für

(48.) Provine, “Geneticists and the Biology of Race Crossing,” 796.

Subscriber: University of Glasgow; date: 29 April 2018

Nils Roll-Hansen is Professor Emeritus of History and Philosophy of Science at the

Subscriber: University of Glasgow; date: 29 April 2018

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