Monists & Nazis: A Question of Scientific Responsibility

Abstract

F EW SCIENTISTS have thought of themselves as major political and social reformers. Some have positively shrunk from such an idea-most notably, Charles Darwin. Darwin preferred to leave debates over the social or political implications of natural selection to his popularizers. While "Darwin's bulldogs" such as Thomas Henry Huxley fought to win popular acceptance of natural selection, Darwin himself generally remained inaccessible at his country home. Darwin would have preferred that scientific theories not have bothersome social or political implications. To a follower who attempted to combine natural selection with reform ideas, Darwin wrote, "Your boldness makes me tremble." That statement was made to Ernst Haeckel, zoologist, and one of the leaders of the German Monistic Alliance, a movement founded to popularize Darwinism. Between 1860 and 1914, Monism was the major Darwinian movement in continental Europe. From Darwinism, the Monists attempted to create a popular creed for social and political reforms. The idea of a "reforming" Social Darwinism was unusual, for most Social Darwinians were conservative and antireform. The Monists, however, derived from Darwinism plans for a wide variety of reforms, ranging from the legalization of abortion to strict regulation of industrial and land monopolies in Germany. The message of Darwinian reform was carried to a reading audience which, in size, rivaled Darwin's own. Monistic works were translated into more than twenty-four languages; their reading audience numbered between one-half million and a million persons. And although the membership of the German Monistic Alliance never exceeded seven thousand, that membership included individuals of scientific eminence, including one Nobel laureate.