Friday, April 08, 2005
Richard Weikart "From Darwin to Hitler" Speech at Seattle Pacific
Red State Rabble reader James Williams has sent along this report of Discovery Institute fellow Richard Weikart's April 7 speech at Seattle Pacific University:
I’ve just returned from Richard Weikart’s lecture entitled “From Darwin to Hitler,” given tonight at Seattle Pacific University. Weikart is a history professor from CSU-Stanislaus who’s got a new book out, and I found him to be a kind, intelligent man. A thin, gray-bearded academic sporting a snazzy maroon blazer, he seemed like the sort of person who could be any student’s favorite professor.
Although he framed his talk in the context of history, Weikart’s chief conclusions were highly philosophical—and admittedly political. Using the terms “Darwinism” and “Social Darwinism” more or less interchangeably (because, as he later told me, one can’t really separate science and philosophy), he attempted to link Darwinism with the eugenics movements in Nazi Germany and early twentieth-century America.
I found his historical examples fascinating, and I wish there had been more of them. Instead of stopping with Hitler, though (who only gets one chapter of his book), he continued on to lambaste contemporary writers like Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett by way of selective quotation. Glossing their subtle arguments and aiming for the moral jugular, he hastily linked their names, and Darwin’s, with euthanasia, infanticide, and so on.
In addition, rather than maintaining a historical impartiality, he frequently chose to introduce certain terms sarcastically. These tended to be words that would seem odd to a religious audience: “speciesism” or “consciousness,” for example. Such delivery prompted chuckles from the audience, who was all choir tonight: when an upcoming lecture by Intelligent Design advocate William Dembski was announced, an approving “Hmmm…” filled the room.
I had a chance to talk at length with Weikart after his address. He was very articulate, and I very much enjoyed our conversation. I pressed him with the notion that perhaps Social Darwinism and eugenics are not innate to Darwinian thought, but are instead a misapplication of scientific ideas naïvely extended into the cultural realm. He responded by saying that since a scientist’s philosophy informs his scientific work, one cannot really disentangle the two, and that therefore Darwinian science is necessarily freighted with philosophical baggage. I replied that such linkage seems unwarranted to me, since the nature of empirical investigation is such that it does not matter who carries it out. We do not link Newton’s politics or philosophy with his theory of gravity, for instance. This line of reasoning seems a bit like trying to hold Christ accountable for the Crusades.
In sum, tonight was double-edged. I realized, as I had not before, that critics of Darwin are in fact sincere. Previously I could not imagine how one could look at our accumulated scientific data and not be in awe of evolution’s grandeur and sheer explanatory scope. But now I know that this debate has nothing whatsoever to do with science. It involves a thought-step that occurs even prior to reason; it stems from an emotionally-driven fear of moral degradation. This leads into my second point: I now see with certainty that the Discovery Institute is not a scientific organization at all. They are a political one which is oriented toward a religious end. This is how you get a department of political science inviting a professor of history to come and talk about natural science, which he then extrapolates into philosophy. Such contortions!
But despite their methods, these are good people. Before I spoke with Weikart I listened as he was consoling a woman who was worried that the American political climate might once again swing toward eugenics and Social Darwinism. “What could happen that would prevent that?” she asked. Weikart replied that a “resurgence of Christianity” would certainly help.
I had always heard about the Wedge, but never seen it in action. It was less shrill than I thought, but far more subtle. I don’t know whether to be relieved or disturbed.
I’ve just returned from Richard Weikart’s lecture entitled “From Darwin to Hitler,” given tonight at Seattle Pacific University. Weikart is a history professor from CSU-Stanislaus who’s got a new book out, and I found him to be a kind, intelligent man. A thin, gray-bearded academic sporting a snazzy maroon blazer, he seemed like the sort of person who could be any student’s favorite professor.
Although he framed his talk in the context of history, Weikart’s chief conclusions were highly philosophical—and admittedly political. Using the terms “Darwinism” and “Social Darwinism” more or less interchangeably (because, as he later told me, one can’t really separate science and philosophy), he attempted to link Darwinism with the eugenics movements in Nazi Germany and early twentieth-century America.
I found his historical examples fascinating, and I wish there had been more of them. Instead of stopping with Hitler, though (who only gets one chapter of his book), he continued on to lambaste contemporary writers like Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett by way of selective quotation. Glossing their subtle arguments and aiming for the moral jugular, he hastily linked their names, and Darwin’s, with euthanasia, infanticide, and so on.
In addition, rather than maintaining a historical impartiality, he frequently chose to introduce certain terms sarcastically. These tended to be words that would seem odd to a religious audience: “speciesism” or “consciousness,” for example. Such delivery prompted chuckles from the audience, who was all choir tonight: when an upcoming lecture by Intelligent Design advocate William Dembski was announced, an approving “Hmmm…” filled the room.
I had a chance to talk at length with Weikart after his address. He was very articulate, and I very much enjoyed our conversation. I pressed him with the notion that perhaps Social Darwinism and eugenics are not innate to Darwinian thought, but are instead a misapplication of scientific ideas naïvely extended into the cultural realm. He responded by saying that since a scientist’s philosophy informs his scientific work, one cannot really disentangle the two, and that therefore Darwinian science is necessarily freighted with philosophical baggage. I replied that such linkage seems unwarranted to me, since the nature of empirical investigation is such that it does not matter who carries it out. We do not link Newton’s politics or philosophy with his theory of gravity, for instance. This line of reasoning seems a bit like trying to hold Christ accountable for the Crusades.
In sum, tonight was double-edged. I realized, as I had not before, that critics of Darwin are in fact sincere. Previously I could not imagine how one could look at our accumulated scientific data and not be in awe of evolution’s grandeur and sheer explanatory scope. But now I know that this debate has nothing whatsoever to do with science. It involves a thought-step that occurs even prior to reason; it stems from an emotionally-driven fear of moral degradation. This leads into my second point: I now see with certainty that the Discovery Institute is not a scientific organization at all. They are a political one which is oriented toward a religious end. This is how you get a department of political science inviting a professor of history to come and talk about natural science, which he then extrapolates into philosophy. Such contortions!
But despite their methods, these are good people. Before I spoke with Weikart I listened as he was consoling a woman who was worried that the American political climate might once again swing toward eugenics and Social Darwinism. “What could happen that would prevent that?” she asked. Weikart replied that a “resurgence of Christianity” would certainly help.
I had always heard about the Wedge, but never seen it in action. It was less shrill than I thought, but far more subtle. I don’t know whether to be relieved or disturbed.
