How Darwin's Ideas Changed Politics
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'Amongst the throng of Darwin books released in this bicentenary year of the scientist's birth, The Political Gene manages to find an intriguing space for itself. Subtitled How Darwin's Ideas Changed Politics, it looks at how politicians have warped Darwinian ideas for their own ends, from eugenics to racism, in a litany of crimes against humanity that range from the deluded to the downright evil.'
--The Big Issue
'The Political Gene by Dennis Sewell is the only one of the Darwin books that actually explains what really matters - the consequences of the adoption of his theory for the conduct of human affairs.' --David Cox, Books of the Year, Evening Standard
'The best book to have come out of the Darwin centenary.'
--World Magazine
--The Big Issue
'The Political Gene by Dennis Sewell is the only one of the Darwin books that actually explains what really matters - the consequences of the adoption of his theory for the conduct of human affairs.' --David Cox, Books of the Year, Evening Standard
'The best book to have come out of the Darwin centenary.'
--World Magazine
Book Description
With the publication of The Origin of Species and The Descent of Man, Charles Darwin not only sparked a revolution in science, but also radically changed the way millions of people thought about themselves, their societies and their values. The evolutionary science he gave birth to acquired a political dimension from the outset, and one with a deeply troubling and ongoing impact on the world in which we live. The Political Gene examines how scientists and politicians have sought to use Darwin’s ideas to solve social problems, or to bolster political ideologies. Social Darwinism, eugenics and scientific racialism – whose adherents have all claimed Charles Darwin as their inspiration – became associated with some of the darkest episodes in our recent past. Dennis Sewell follows the thread of theory and the historical footprints left by a myriad cast of key characters to tell an often shocking and sometimes heartbreaking story. Sewell’s narrative shows us what drove people to put a black man on display in a zoo, forcibly sterilize a pair of innocent teenage sisters, lock up a British girl for eighteen years for a petty theft, murder disabled people in Nazi Germany, and slam shut America’s ‘Golden Door’. Poverty and welfare, race and immigration, education, sexual equality and human rights are just some of the public policy areas to have felt the effects of Darwinian thought. Today, rapid advances in genetic and evolutionary science are once again placing Darwin’s theories at the centre of some of the most bitterly contested cultural and political controversies. In the future, as the stakes for humanity are raised yet higher, the gene is set to become more political than ever before.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
At the end of a year dedicated to the bicentenary of the great man's birth, Dennis Sewell has produced a short, but lively tail-piece, in which he examines some of the social and political consequences of the thought of Charles Darwin.
No man is to blame for the excesses perpetrated by his less gifted disciples, and perhaps it is too cynical to suggest that one measure of a man's greatness is the number of crimes committed in his name. Mr Sewell's analysis nevertheless suggests that, measured on such a scale, Darwin scores pretty strongly. Much of 'The Political Gene' is a sad catalogue of enforced segregation, serilisation, euthanasia, mass murder and genocide all justified by appeals to science, progress, and a 'higher' necessity.
'Higher than what?', you may wonder.
Of course we are all familiar with the crimes against humanity committed in Germany between 1933 and 1945, and the language used to justify them. What Mr.Sewell does here is to put what might otherwise seem extraordinary into a contemporary setting in which similar expressions were used to justify programmes of discrimination and persecution against the weakest and poorest members of society in both the United States and in the United Kingdom. In each case, some elevated claim was made for the prevailing 'racial stock' - its representatives being found chiefly in the rich, respectable and self-satisfied - whilst the poor were seen as entirely responsible for their own plight - a vile, feckless and degraded sub-species threatening civilisation with a consuming gangrene.
Darwin himself noted that the benefits of civilisation allow the weak to breed: 'No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man.... Read more ›
No man is to blame for the excesses perpetrated by his less gifted disciples, and perhaps it is too cynical to suggest that one measure of a man's greatness is the number of crimes committed in his name. Mr Sewell's analysis nevertheless suggests that, measured on such a scale, Darwin scores pretty strongly. Much of 'The Political Gene' is a sad catalogue of enforced segregation, serilisation, euthanasia, mass murder and genocide all justified by appeals to science, progress, and a 'higher' necessity.
'Higher than what?', you may wonder.
Of course we are all familiar with the crimes against humanity committed in Germany between 1933 and 1945, and the language used to justify them. What Mr.Sewell does here is to put what might otherwise seem extraordinary into a contemporary setting in which similar expressions were used to justify programmes of discrimination and persecution against the weakest and poorest members of society in both the United States and in the United Kingdom. In each case, some elevated claim was made for the prevailing 'racial stock' - its representatives being found chiefly in the rich, respectable and self-satisfied - whilst the poor were seen as entirely responsible for their own plight - a vile, feckless and degraded sub-species threatening civilisation with a consuming gangrene.
Darwin himself noted that the benefits of civilisation allow the weak to breed: 'No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man.... Read more ›
8 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Dennis Sewell has carefully documented how often - and how easily - Darwinism has been harnessed for evil sinister political ends. For example, racism existed before Darwin but Darwinism caused the racial hierarchy to become a matter of science which inspired the nefarious eugenics movement that ended up sterilizing many thousands of people in America and murdering many millions in China, Germany, and much of Europe. Sewell documents that the thinking behind eugenics is still with very much with us today. One of many examples Sewell noted that documented the fact the problem is still with us is the case of Finnish student Pekka-Eric Auvinen, who murdered 8 people at his high school on November 2007. Auvinen wrote in his blog that "stupid, weak-minded people are reproducing ... faster than the intelligent, strong-minded" persons. Auvinen thought through the philosophical implications of Darwin's argument and concluded that human life, like every other animal life, has no special value. Sewell adds that the Columbine killers made similar arguments. One Columbine killer, Eric Harris, wore a "Natural Selection" T-shirt on the day of the massacre. These modern examples show how easily Darwin's writings have led to very disturbed thinking and ways of behaving. The explosion in evolutionary psychology that attempts to describe every type of human behavior as genetically determined is yet another example. Sewell does not feel comfortable with judgments as who should live and die being left to scientists. He also questions what the theory of evolution has done for the practical benefit of humanity. Darwinism hardly occupies a high position in helping mankind compared to antibiotics such as penicillin, or technology such as MRI, or the DNA revolution, or even the World Wide Web revolution.... Read more ›
4 of 16 people found the following review helpful
By richoders
Format:Hardcover
Irrespective of any potential interest you may have in the subject area, this book is well worth avoiding. It fails to sustain any discernable structure and has feel of a manuscript slapped together in a week or two (I hope for the author's sake it took no longer than this). Having read the entire thing (a feat for which I deserve credit) I've learnt nothing. This is certainly not a book about Darwin (or `Darwinism'), not a book about politics, and not a book worth reading.
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