David Starr Jordan on the Dysgenic Effects of Dysfunctional Culture

Abstract

David Starr Jordan, Chancellor of Stanford University, typified the positive eugenicists who were writing at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. In the light of modern genetics it is reasonable to say that he accurately identified the importance of reproductive selection in determining the destiny of any breeding population, and drew attention to the fact that while culture came into existence as a factor which helped promote the survival of the population which possessed it, culture can also be dysfunctional and exert dysgenic pressures on those who adhere to value systems which counter to nature's law of survival of the fittest. Key Words: Evolution, culture, selection, dysgenics, intelligence, war, Catholicism, celibacy, primogeniture One of the first to scholars to stress the dysgenic aspects of modern warfare was David Starr Jordan (1851-1931), a biologist who served as President of Indiana University (1875-1892), president of Stanford University (then known as Leland Stanford Jr., University) (1891-1913) and later as Chancellor of the same university (1913-1916). Jordan's approach to eugenics was characteristic of the mainstream position at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. He emphasized positive eugenics, favoring an increase in the fertility rate of the fitter members of society rather than attempts to eliminate inferior genes from the gene pool. His positive eugenics concentrates specifically on nations as breeding units. And he uses the term to refer to both human subspecies and to the human species as a whole. In fact, without prevarication he uses to refer to any phylogenetic continuum. He also saw every generation as a genetic bottleneck in the course of which selection, either eugenic or dysgenic, determines which genes will be passed on to future generations. Thus, in The Blood of the Nation (1903)1, Jordan commences his test with the assertion that: In this paper I shall set forth two propositions: the one selfevident; the other not apparent at first sight, but equally demonstrable. The of a nation determines its history. This is the first proposition. The second is: the history of a nation determines its The present character of a nation is made by its past history. Those who are alive to-day are the resultants of the stream of heredity as modified by the vicissitudes through which the nation has passed. This stream flows in the veins of those who survive. Those who die without descendants can not color the stream of heredity. It must take its traits from the actual parentage. Some of today's readers might quibble at Jordan's use of the term blood to refer to heredity, but it must be understood that this is an ancient symbolism, dating back to classical Greece and Rome, and Jordan takes care to explain that: The word blood in this sense is figurative only, an expression formed to cover the qualities of heredity. Such traits, as the phrase goes, run in the blood. In the earlier philosophy it was held that was the actual physical vehicle of heredity, that the traits bequeathed from sire to son as the characteristics of families or races ran literally in the literal We know now that this is not the case. We know that the actual in the actual veins plays no part in heredity, that the transfusion of means no more than the transposition of food, and that the physical basis of the phenomena of inheritance is found in the structure of the germ cell and its contained germ-plasm. But the old word well serves our purposes. The which is thicker than water is the symbol of unity. In this sense the of the people concerned is at once the cause and the result of the deeds recorded in their history. This last sentence, in which Jordan refers to as the symbol of race unity, is characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon eugenicists of his period who were inspired by a deep-rooted sense of loyalty to their own bloodline, and sought to ensure a better future for their descendants. …