Biology and Ideology from Descartes to Dawkins
Biology and Ideology from Descartes to Dawkins
EDITED BY DENIS R . ALEXANDER AND RONALD L . NUMBERS
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS CHICAGO AND LONDON
SUPPORTED BY A GRANT FROM THE TEMPLETON PUBLISHING SUBSIDY PROGRAM.
Denis R. Alexander is director of The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, St. Edmund’s College, Cambridge, and has worked in the biological research community for the past forty years. Ronald L. Numbers is Hilldale Professor of History of Science and Medicine at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and coeditor of When Science and Christianity Meet, also published by the University of Chicago Press.
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2010 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. Published 2010 Printed in the United States of America
19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 1 2 3 4 5
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-60840-2 (cloth)
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-60841-9 (paper)
ISBN-10: 0-226-60840-9 (cloth)
ISBN-10: 0-226-60841-7 (paper)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Biology and ideology from Descartes to Dawkins / edited by Denis R. Alexander and Ronald L. Numbers.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-60840-2 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-226-60840-9 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-60841-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-226-60841-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Biology—Philosophy. 2. Biology— Religious aspects. 3. Evolution (Biology)—Philosophy. 4. Genetics—Philosophy.
5. Eugenics—Philosophy. I. Alexander, Denis R. II. Numbers, Ronald L.
QH331.B477 2010
570.1—dc22
2009034186
a The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American
National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Contents
Introduction 1
Denis R. Alexander and Ronald L. Numbers
CHAPTER 1. The cultural authority of natural history in early modern Europe 11
Peter Harrison
CHAPTER 2. Biology, atheism, and politics in eighteenth-century France 36
Shirley A. Roe
CHAPTER 3. Eighteenth-century uses of vitalism in constructing the human sciences 61
Peter Hanns Reill
CHAPTER 4. Biology in the service of natural theology:
Paley, Darwin, and the Bridgewater Treatises 88
Jonathan R. Topham
CHAPTER 5. Race, empire, and biology before Darwinism 114
Sujit Sivasundaram
CHAPTER 6. Darwin’s choice 139
Nicolaas Rupke
CHAPTER 7. Biology and the emergence of the Anglo-American eugenics movement 165
Edward J. Larson
CHAPTER 8. Genetics, eugenics, and the Holocaust 192
Paul Weindling
CHAPTER 9. Darwinism, Marxism, and genetics in the Soviet Union 215
Nikolai Krementsov
CHAPTER 10. Evolution and the idea of social Progress 247
Michael Ruse
CHAPTER 11. Beauty and the beast? Conceptualizing sex in evolutionary narratives 276
Erika Lorraine Milam
CHAPTER 12. Creationism, intelligent design, and modern biology 302
Ronald L. Numbers
CHAPTER 13. The ideological uses of evolutionary biology in recent atheist apologetics 329
Alister E. McGrath
Acknowledgments 353
Notes 355
Contributors 429
Index 435