Information Related to "How Darwin's Theory Changed the World"
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A century and a half after the publication of The Origin of Species, it's difficult for us today to appreciate the seismic shift in attitudes that began with its publication. Most of us have grown up having been taught Darwin's theory in our schools. Many people accept it unquestioningly. Few question the teaching of his ideas in our public schools. But it was very different in 1859.
Richard Weikart, head of the history department at California State University, Stanislaus, describes how some viewed the book's initial publication: "A good deal of the initial resistance to Darwinism sprang from a perceived threat to the moral order. Adam Sedgwick, Darwin's former mentor in natural science at the University of Cambridge, expressed this fear poignantly in a letter to Darwin in 1859, shortly after reading The Origin of Species. He stated, 'Passages in your book...greatly shocked my moral taste'" (From Darwin to Hitler, 2004, p. 1).
Warning of the consequences of the book's publication, Sedgwick added that "humanity, in my mind, would suffer a damage that might brutalize it, and sink the human race into a lower grade of degradation than any into which it has fallen since its written records tell us of its history" (ibid.).
Enthused with his new theory, it's doubtful that Charles Darwin gave much
thought to the possible moral consequences of what he was writing. He certainly
could not have foreseen that less than 75 years later, his ideas would
lead to Adolf Hitler and the Holocaust, the Nazi attempt at exterminating
the Jews. But Professor Weikart's detailed book documents the connection,
with plenty of quotes from mostly German philosophers and scientists in
the intervening years.
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