6.10 The Means of Accomplishing part 10

The “White man’s burden” and societies’ “evolution stages” required justifications. With the beginning of the industrial revolution that justification needed the weight of science.¹ What made the white “man” superior? Science and politics turned to evolution, which later became the justification for eugenics.

Evolution theories did not begin with Charles Darwin (1809-1882) and On the Origin of Species (1859). It began with farmers saving the seeds of their best crops to plant the next year. It began with farmers improving their herds by controlling the breeding. By the start of the nineteenth century there were multiple theories, with or without God’s intervention.

In 1809 naturalist-biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829) published Philosophie Zoologique. Given the early nineteenth century prejudices and lack of information on genes and chromosomes, it was an impressive effort. However those prejudices and limitations left space other interests to shape his work. The most important interest, the usefulness that drew public support, was that his work justified colonialists’ moral duty to subjugate others. The errors in his work justified colonialism as the white man’s duty.

According to Lamarck’s theory evolution had a limited capacity to change plants and animals. First, species were set at creation. An animal in a species (cat) could evolve into others forms of that species (lion, lynx, jaguar). No member of a species could evolve to create another species (a fish to a frog to a bird or lizard).² Second, evolution was temporary (soft evolution). The challenge of evolution theories is “What causes evolution?” Lamarck explained that evolution was temporary.³ God, the outside agent, set species when he created the world. Farmers understood themselves as outside agents when they guided the evolution in their crops and livestock. What cause members within a species to evolve? His scientific answer was “effort.” The giraffe gets its long Neck because it strains (effort) to eat the leaves of tall trees.

What evidence supported that claim? People who lift weights get bigger muscles and can lift more weight. People who train can run faster, throw farther. Studying makes you smarter. Taking care of you body makes you live longer. Effort drives evolution. This is wrong, but wrong in a complex way that was not understood until the late twentieth century.

How is it wrong?

Physiological changes do not cause genetic changes. [In]heritable genetic changes take place in the genes of the sperm of ova. Radiation can break genes, creating damage that pass to the offspring, if the fertilized ova remains viable. A tattoo, scar, or brand permanently changes the host body. It does not change the genes. Tattooed parents’ children are not born with tattoos.

How does biology complicate the story?

Changes in the environment can cause changes in the parents’ children. This is “soft evolution” and may be what Lamarck described without his understanding its limits. The children of nobles and middle or upper class couples were healthier and larger than the children of peasants and the poor. The Japanese soldiers in WW II were smaller than Americans. That difference continued through the first generation following WW II. The cause wasn’t a lack of effort. Changes in the protein diet two generation after the war increased Japanese men’s height from 5’5” to 5’8”, closer to the US male average (5’9”).

The biological process involved is epigenetics. Environmental and emotional conditions surrounding the parents, especially at crucial times around puberty can change the enzymes surrounding sperm and ova. The stress when parents experience privation or severe emotional stress can change those enzymes in ways that alter the time or intensity in which developmental sequences occur. Stress can lead of weight issues. Privation can lead to stunted size, a preemptory change to pair size with the available food in a marginal environment. It does not change the genetics. The enzymes change the timing of and duration of process forming the developing fetus. These epigenetic changes can pass to children of one or two years, long enough to seem permanent.

What Lamarck would find in his studies is wealthy people with healthy kids. Poor people, who were poor because they didn’t work hard enough, devolved resulting in degenerated children.⁴ By the mid eighteen hundreds, Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) would argue that it is the duty of society to let the poor die.⁵

Lamarck’s theory fit perfectly with colonialists’ need. White Europeans believed they self-evidently were a superior society because they were personally superior. That meant their beliefs weren’t racist, their right to govern was science. The use of military violence was simply established the order needed so that they could guide savages to modern life.

Lamarckian evolution carried an equally ominous warning that gradually infiltrated Western Society (Herbert Spencer Social Statics (1851)). As society became more complex the effort needed to preserve or improve (soft) evolutionary development became greater. Ancient Romans could afford orgies because their world was so simple. With modern world pressures sexual excess would cause degeneracy. The loss of seamen for the evolved man threatened to drain his brain and cause madness. The demands on evolved man turned excessive sex into a new apocalypse. The son who masturbated threatened the legacy of the family (and he’d go blind!). Kellogg’s Cornflakes and Graham crackers were specifically invented in the belief that they would reduce carnal desire.

Similarly, physical or intellectual efforts by upper and middle class ladies would destroy their fitness as reproductive partners. Education will leave the infertile. Exposure to the violent world of business and government would harm the reproductive potential. The dutiful husband would have sex only to produce and child, and do it as quickly as possible.

As the Divine right of Kings and Norman subjugation of women eased with colonialism and the beginning of the industrial revolution new justifications emerged to preserve the power of the male aristocracy. The theories may have been sincere efforts, but there were better competing theories that languished because they did not fulfill the elite’s need for justification.

1 A full explanation deserves more information than a footnote allows. Religion had argued for separate creations to account for different races, with Adam, the only true human, the highest creation. What started as three creations–white, black, Middle Eastern–expanded to include Asian, Indigenous American, Polynesian, Inuit, etc. Further complicating a Biblical explanation, since those creations did not exist in the Bible, it is possible God presented them with different leaders and laws. The solution of simply calling others heathen and inferior was rejected in colonial society because if they became Christian and educated “white’ governments would have no justification for continuing to exploit them. So gender and the invention of race became “scientific” justifications for subordination.

2 Part of his justification was that the world was too young for complex evolution. Part of his justification was that God placed every species on Earth at the same time.

3 If purebred dogs breed randomly within a few generation they will revert to a middle sized mutt. The unique features of size, shape, coat will disappear, as will many of the genetic problems (cancer or hip and elbow dysplasia among golden retrieves, for example) also reduce. Notably, being purebred does not mean being biologically superior.

4 The idea of degeneration that produced eugenics believed intelligence was shaped by a single gene that would allow a society to eliminate “stupidity” by preventing mentally inferior (or racially inferior) people from having children. Research shows that the factors leading to intelligence are spread over many genes that work in combination. It can’t be breed out of the population. Further, the Y (male) chromosome holds few of the intelligence gene sequences, meaning intelligence comes predominantly from mothers.

5 The American sociologist William Graham Sumner (1840-1910), who taught the sons of the Gilded Age millionaires, was more extreme than Spencer on rejecting aid to those in need.