Ornithology, Evolution, and Philosophy 123

Personality and General Views 287
In his autobiographical notes he continued: “In personal contact with other
people I am usually friendly, generous, altruistic, readily joking, so that others
referred to me as ‘a nice guy.’ However, in scientific controversies and in political
arguments I seem to be a different person. There I seem to be aggressive, intolerant,
stubborn, intent on having the last word on any price. I have often thought about
the possible reason for this contrast. I rather suspect what is involved is that
through much of my early life I found myself again and again at the bottom of the
totempoleandhadtofightmywayup.ItstartedinmychildhoodbecauseIwas
the middle of three brothers. The oldest had all sorts of privileges and so did the
youngest. There never was a special privilege for the middle brother even though
my mother tried to be as just as possible. Being a later born predestined me to be
somewhat rebellious, as Sulloway (1996) has shown.
When I was in school owing to my father’s promotions and death I found myself
several times a stranger in a new school. When I arrived in Munich in 1914 I spoke
the Franconian dialect which was very different from the Munich Bavarian dialect.
It took quite some time before I was acculturated in this new environment. In 1917
we moved to Dresden in Saxony and again I was an alien element in my class and
it took me some time to become adjusted and make friends. When I arrived at the
American Museum in 1931 I was 15 years younger than any of the other scientists
there and, furthermore, Chapman, the chairman of the department, always had
the peculiar feeling that the 4th floor of the Whitney Wing which contained the
Whitney-Rothschild and other Old World collections was not really part of the
Bird Department. Finally, when at Harvard I was elected to quite a few committees
in Washington I always had to fight for the well-being of taxonomy. There was
a widespread feeling among the university biologists that taxonomy was not a real
science, meaning an experimental science. I believe that my aggressiveness in
arguments is related to this set of experiences in my younger years. Even during
the evolutionary synthesis and the ensuing years, being a taxonomist and museum
person rather than a geneticist or other kind of university scientist seemed to
result in discrimination. At the Chicago Darwin Celebration in 1959 the major
attending evolutionists received honorary degrees from the University of Chicago.
But no Ernst Mayr. Both Dobzhansky and Simpson were elected to the Royal
Society in middle age. Ernst Mayr not until he was well into his 80s, and so it
goes. As far as my science is concerned this aggressiveness was an advantage but
as far as my personality and my relation to people were concerned it definitely was
not.”
Mayr was not humble or modest but always ambitious and self-confident. However,
he did point out that certain aspects of his early career were due to no more
than a series of accidents (p. 3). On the other hand, he defended his scientific
views and theories firmly, even if they were controversial like eugenics which Mayr
considered the only way to “develop mankind further,” although he admitted that
in practice, this is not feasible. He honored the theories of fellow scientists but
claimed very firmly the merits for himself in those instances where he was the
first, e.g., to propose theories of island biogeography (1933j, 1940i) and of rapid
speciation from small populations (1954c). Examples of his self-confidence are his