Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology

50
Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology, Vol. 10 (2005)
Eve-Marie Engels
moral progress consists in extending social behavior to members of other tribes, nations
and races as well as to helpless, diseased and weak human beings and ultimately also to
animals. In this respect Darwin does not establish any socio-political program based on
the principle of the “survival of the fittest” (cf. Peters 1972, Engels 1995b); he does not
raise any normative Social-Darwinist claims. It is significant that authors like Alexander
Tille 12 and the physician Wilhelm Schallmayer from Munich criticized Darwin’s adherence
to Christian, humanitarian ideals (Tille 1894; Tille 1895), writing
”[i]nstead of investigating the question as to how culture and civilization hindered the elevation of
the human race in all aspects, Darwin limited himself to the study of how what are now praised as
the virtues of sympathy, altruism and truthfulness evolved. This is, to be sure, interesting as well,
but compared with that practical, fundamental question, it only has very theoretical value …”
(Tille 1894, pg. 312).
In a competition held in 1900, which addressed the question “What do we learn from
the theories of descent in relation to inner-political developments and the legislature of
States?”, written up by Ernst Haeckel (Jena), the national economist Johannes Conrad
(Halle) and the paleontologist Eberhard Fraas (Stuttgart), and financed by Alfred Krupp
(Schallmayer 1903), who donated 30,000 Marks prize money, the physician Wilhelm
Schallmayer won the first prize (Schallmayer 1903). In an article he raises the following
objection to Darwin and other eminent representatives of the theory of evolution such
as Alfred Russell Wallace, Thomas H. Huxley and John Hutton Balfour:
“Ch. Darwin did indeed recognize the severe disruptures which natural selection has suffered
from our conditions of culture and in private he made some quite grim remarks about their consequences.
But he did not make any efforts to demand that these conditions be changed to good
purpose. Wallace, Huxley, Balfour and others recognize the ill as well, but they abhore all notions
of socially controlled racial selection and hope for what are in part quite questionable countereffects
in the future.” (Schallmayer 1902, pg. 271f).
In light of this distancing from Darwin, the latter cannot be made responsible for the
dissemination of positions like those exemplarily advocated by Tille and Schallmayer. For
this reason as well, the term “Social Darwinism” is misleading. 13
One must concede, however, that despite his basic humanitarian convictions, Darwin’s
observations are ambivalent in many respects, leaving great latitude for (mis-) interpretation.
There are many reasons for this ambivalence. Darwin lived in a time of
upheaval in the biological sciences, an upheaval which he himself contributed to as one
of its most eminent protagonists. His thought is shaped by different, in part contradictory
thought-styles. Moreover, the age-related ignorance of the laws of heredity, the appealing
metaphoric quality of his style, the pitfalls of the translations of his works, the
enticements of evolutionary anthropology and the complexity of his theories, which
12 Concerning the life and work of Alexander Tilles cf. Schungel 1980.
13 Concerning the wide range of political interpretations of Darwinism, cf. the informative survey on various
positions in Bayertz 1998.