3 The New York Years (1931–1953)

372 11 History and Philosophy of Biology—Mayr’s Third Synthesis
birth-control appears to be not enough and Mayr recommended a set of incentives
to be built into the tax system, pension system, and welfare system in the hope that
this will lead to zero population growth in the United States (and elsewhere).
The Biological Future of Mankind
Ever since his days as a student did Mayr favor positive eugenics, although he
realized that it is difficult to achieve. In view of the growing overpopulation of the
world “the time will come, and perhaps sooner than we think, when parents will
have to take out a license to produce a child” and “positive eugenics is of great
importance for the future of mankind and all roadblocks must be removed that
stand in the way of intensifying research in this area” (in a letter dated April 14,
1971).
In his comments on J. B. S. Haldane’s essay on “Daedalus or Science and the
Future” of 1925 Mayr (1995d) pointed out that eugenics was universally popular
during the early 20th century, from far-right to far-left writers. Enough was
known about inheritance that in theory a genetic improvement of mankind seemed
possible and Haldane speculated about the production of “ectogenic” test-tube babies
(!) causing a scandal. His friend Aldous Huxley was inspired by Haldane’s
scheme of eugenics to elaborate this scenario in his book, Brave New World (1932).
In a lecture which Mayr gave at the Jungius Society of Hamburg on the biological
future of man (1974f), he made clear that any truly biological improvement of man
was only possible through eugenics, but left it open whether this was feasible or
not. He emphasized that ethical values are nothing absolute but conditioned by
circumstances.
“There were a lot of students in the audience, and in particular a strong delegation
of the Spartakus Bund, a communist organization. They tried to refute me by
invoking the communist paradise in Russia, but in answering them, pointing out
that I had been in Russia and none of them had, and also refuting in detail every
single other one of their arguments. With much applause from the other audience,
I silenced them so completely that they decided it was better strategy not to answer
me again. It simply would have given me more opportunity to describe the futility
of Soviet communism.”
(The “Biology Section” of the Spartakus Bund in Hamburg commented on
Mayr’s lecture in their pamphlet “The Red Handlense” (Die rote Lupe), Nr. 6,
October 1973).
Realism and Liberal Education
Most people adopt commonsense realism because it works (Mayr 1997i). They
accept that there is an outside world and that it is more or less as our sense organs
tell us: This is the middle world (mesocosmos) which extends from the atom
to the solar system. The microcosmos is the world of the atom and elementary
particles and the macrocosmos is the world outside the solar system. The micro-