And science as much as any other form of culture has been involved in the attempt to preserve social order; biology in particular has long served as a useful social weapon. In the late 19th and early 20th century, American and British social darwinists found in the theory of evolution by natural selection a kind of...
Tag - biological determinism
Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, by James Jones, is a chronicle of the appalling cruelty that turned people into "subjects" for the sake of science. The men in the study were told that they had "bad blood''—but the "treatment'' they received was only aspirin and iron tonic. The PHS worked with local...
Seen in this light, sex role research is most easily explained as a social and political phenomenon, not a scientific one. Once again the scientific community has come forth with an apology for the status quo (in this case, male domination), and once again, it has done so with great success. There is no deliberate...
Political from inception, concepts of “man the hunter” and “the killer ape” are no less political in conclusion and application. They are also dishonest, speculative and often untrue. But even if “man” (never “woman”) were a hunting animal during the dawning years of our lineage, even if this hunting lifestyle had...
In an unequal set of economic relations as exist within American industry, scientists must work extremely hard to see that on matters of health all sides are considered equally. This means they will have to forge links with workers and progressive unions who are struggling over occupational health issues. They will...
Among almost 207,500 science and engineering Ph.D.s in this country, 93.4 percent are white and 92.1 percent are male. In the biological sciences, women hold approximately 11 percent of the doctorates. This has a profound effect on science and on what we perceive as the truth about ourselves as male or female human...
As most readers of Science for the People are aware, speculations about the evolutionary and genetic bases of human behavior have stirred controversy since the publication of E.O. Wilson's Sociobiology: The New Synthesis in 1975.
1. The Rise of Social Darwinism
Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American Thought. Boston: Beacon Press, 1955.
Zmarzlik, "Social Darwinism in Germany, Seen as an Historical Problem," Chap. 10 in Republic to Reich: The Making of the Nazi Revolution, (ed.) H. Holborn, Vintage Books; 1973, pp. 435-474.
In late 1973, people in the Boston area who heard about our group began to give us some details about a study being conducted at the Boston Hospital for Women. In this study the researchers were screening all newborn males for the XYY karyotype and then following the XYY children to detect any “psychopathology” =...
Class societies must provide a system of police in order to maintain themselves. Historically such a system has had a dual basis, physical and ideological. The development of ideological weaponry is accomplished largely through the work of intellectuals. To counteract the ideological arsenal has been, and still is, an...