I agree with a lot of what Daniel Gasman said about the dishonest approach of Robert Richards in his doing what the St. Darwin industry did for Darwin for Ernst Haeckel. His review of The Tragic Sense of Life begins this way:
IN BEN STEIN’S DOCUMENTARY FILM Expelled, the erstwhile game-show host and financial
columnist attempted to link Darwin to Hitler and thereby condemn the scientific theory of evolution by association with the political theory of National Socialism. The film failed, fortunately, and was thoroughly panned by the critics. But in the cultural brouhaha stirred by the film’s release and subsequent disappearance from the big screen, not enough attention has been paid to whether or not there was a historical connection between the social Darwinists of the 19th century with the National Socialists of the 20th century. It turns out that there is, through the personage of the German biologist Ernst Haeckel; but a new biography of Haeckel, published shortly after Stein exited stage left, claims to rehabilitate Haeckel by disconnecting him from German social Darwinism, and thereby exonerating evolutionary theory. Unfortunately this new biography does no such thing, for in the end we must be true to the historical facts.
Rereading that last sentence, let me say "amen" ten times. And in that spirit, let's begin by saying "good riddance" to Ben Stein, without further comment.
I think Gasman did a pretty good job of dismantling Richards' case by pointing out that the only way he could cover up Haeckel's long and damning written record was to suppress major parts of it in his presentation, likely the only thing many of his readers would ever read on the subject of Ernst Haeckel. Not to mention those who only read clipped passages of it online. This is typical of, not only Richards, but the wider effort to distance those in Charles Darwin's inner circle from eugenics and, since eugenics in English can't be disassociated from them, the Nazis.
Richards insists that Haeckel has been misrepresented as an anti-Semite, and that in fact Haeckel
stood out during his time as someone who had befriended the Jewish community in Germany. However, Richards is able to arrive at his denial of “Haeckel’s alleged anti-Semitism” by an egregious manipulation of evidence, including indiscriminate omission of incriminating material and by offering what can only be described as fantastical interpretations of passages from Haeckel’s writings dealing with the Jews. Richards repeats the litany that Haeckel has been falsely accused of hostility to the Jews — “the tendentious charge of anti-Semitism by Gasman….’14 But this claim demonstrates a disturbing lack of knowledge about German history and the history of modern anti-Semitism, because it leaves out the emerging school of “scientific” secular anti-Semitism that Haeckel belonged to and was one of the founding fathers and a guiding light. He does not understand that so-called “scientific” anti-Semitism was much more lethal and prophetic of National Socialist ideology than purely religious traditional antagonism against the Jews. In my book, Haeckel’s Monism and the Birth of Fascist Ideology (1998, 2008) the discussion of the Monist writings of the important French proto-Nazi authors Jules Soury and Georges Vacher de Lapouge — both translators into French of some of Haeckel’s major writings and close disciples of Haeckel — make clear that the ideological foundations of National Socialist anti-Semitism can be directly traced back to the specific influence of Haeckel. Of course, Richards does not mention any of this material, because he is determined to sanitize his book and omit any historical sources that might undermine his fallacious arguments that seek to deny Haeckel’s antagonism towards the Jews and connections with National Socialist ideology in general.
In his remarks in 1894 to the literary critic Hermann Bahr in an interview on the Jewish question,
Haeckel declared the “Jewish Problem” to be a “racial question,” extolled anti-Semitism as a politically creative force, justified its historical role and held the Jews alone responsible for its appearance, and he demanded that the Jews give up their religious identity and disappear from German life as a separate community — hardly examples of statements Richards believes he has found that prove Haeckel’s philoSemitism.
Those parts of the record Gasman mentions which I have read - and he's obviously read more of it than I have, yet - I agree with everything he says there. And it's all of a piece with his monism which Gasman talks about in the first section of his review. One thing about monism is that it must be universal and believed to include every possible aspect of life, the universe and everything. That's what makes it monist. In that part of his review Gasman totally demolishes Richards' attempt to associate Haeckel with Unamuno when Unamuno was absolutely opposed to Haeckel. Frankly, that Richards thought he could get away with that one and lots of other things - and he largely has - is rather damning of the intellectual climate that doesn't fact check at all*
I agree with virtually everything Gasman says about Haeckel's proto-Nazism, I disagree entirely with his attempt to separate and distance Haeckel from Charles Darwin. In order to do that you have to do what he succeeded in showing Richards' arguments try to do, you have to completely disregard what Darwin said about Haeckel's interpretation of Darwin's theory of natural selection and other matters.
Darwin endorsed Haeckel's interpretation of his Natural Selection and other ideas in many letters to Haeckel and to others and most importantly and publicly in his gushing, and effectively complete endorsements of Haeckel's Generelle Morphologie and Naturliche Schopfungsgeschichte in The Descent of Man. And in that, his second most important book on evolution, Darwin's adoption of ideas from Haeckel, some of them as pathological as the beneficial effects for the survivors of infanticide, the elimination of the "weaker members" of the species whether by letting them fend for themselves and perishing before they could reproduce or through their deaths in the struggle for resources. Darwin also asserted the malignant effects of charity on the welfare of society and a host of other moral atrocities. Darwin may have not had the German cultural habit of putting things in philosophical terms very often, thus not specifically endorsing Haeckel's monism - though he could hardly have missed Haeckel's attribution of his pathological monism's final triumph to Darwin - but he endorsed the man, his writing and his ideas as the highest science.
I have found that just as Gasman says you have to ignore the real Haeckel to exonerate him of proto-Nazism, you have to ignore what Charles Darwin said AS SCIENCE with all of the guarantees of reliability implied by that to separate him from Haeckel.
And that isn't a personal observation, it is one that was made by those who knew Darwin, his inner circle of scientific associates such as Thomas Huxley and Ray Lankester and his own son, Francis Darwin, who, unlike any of us today, observed his father and Haeckel talking privately at Darwin's home at Down.
The earliest letter which I have seen from my father to Professor Haeckel, was written in 1865, and from that time forward they corresponded (though not, I think, with any regularity) up to the end of my father's life. His friendship with Haeckel was not nearly growth of correspondence, as was the case with some others, for instance, Fritz Muller. Haeckel paid more than one visit to Down, and these were thoroughly enjoyed by my father. The following letter will serve to show the strong feeling of regard which he entertained for his correspondent—a feeling which I have often heard him emphatically express, and which was warmly returned. The book referred to is Haeckel's 'Generelle Morphologie,' published in 1866, a copy of which my father received from the author in January 1867.
I will note that in his book, The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin it's clear that there were letters to Haeckel from his father that Francis Darwin didn't know about, their correspondence was more extensive than that comment leads you to believe.
If anyone reads Haeckel, from early and on through his career as a writer, he will find that Haeckel constantly cites Darwin and Darwin's writing and ideas. If anyone during his lifetime tried to distance him from Darwin, Haeckel could point to all of those things mentioned, the letters, the glowing and even gushing citations of Haeckel's work and ideas by Darwin, his gladness at having Haeckel's books translated into English, gaining influence for his ideas, and the fact that unlike anyone I've ever found who tried to distance Charles Darwin from Haeckel, Haeckel was on intimate terms with Darwin, having visited him, repeatedly on those visits that Francis Darwin witnessed. For example.
....Neither of those expressions is correct. Darwin himself was convinced of the fundamental importance of progressive heredity quite as much as his great predecessor Lamarck; as were also Huxley and Spencer.
Three times I had the good fortune to visit Darwin at Down, and on each occasion we discussed this fundamental question in complete harmony. I agree with Spencer in the conviction that progressive heredity is an indispensable factor in every true monistic theory of Evolution, and that it is one of its most important elements. If one denies with Weismann the heredity of acquired characters, then it becomes necessary to have recourse to purely mystical qualities of germ-plasm. I am of the opinion of Spencer, that in that case it would be better to accept a mysterious creation of all the various species as described in the Mosaic account.
If anyone who didn't know Darwin wanted to say Haeckel wasn't representative of his thinking, he had letters by the dozen where Darwin thanked him for not only being "one of the few who clearly understand Natural Selection" [Letter of 9th of March, 1864] not only that but thanking him for expressing his ideas "boldly" and that. "Many men in this country & elsewhere really go nearly or quite as far as I do on the modification of Species, but are afraid openly to express such views." Obviously the bold language used by Haeckel was welcomed by Darwin. On top of that there are many more letters and the public endorsements of his science. And there are many, many more of those letters, in Darwin's hand, his florid endorsement of Haeckel in his own scientific writing and the testimony of those who knew Darwin better than anyone.
If Daniel Gasman wants to say that Haeckel corrupted Darwin, Haeckel could cite the ultimate authority to disprove that accusation, Charles Darwin.
* This all seems to be part of the same phenomenon of lax intellectual life that has produced the major and little reported on replication crisis in science, the file draw effect scandal, research to order for corporations, government agencies, etc. It would appear that everyone is just assuming that someone else has been doing the fact checking and verification so they don't bother doing it, themselves, unless they are attacked. I can't help but note that the honors system only works when people have a sense that it is a sin to lie and that when you call it science or history or scholarship which have been granted assumptions of producing reliable knowledge that the little things being let slip leads to massive lying about the big things.
Intellectual life depends on moral absolutes that science doesn't recognize, in fact, science does, too.
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