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Eugenics on 🍃 Nature

A Philosophical Investigation

The Economist special on synthetic biology

The multi-trillion dollar synthetic biology industry reduces animals and plants to meaningless bundles of matter that can be done better by a company.

Evidence that synthetic biology is in fact an unguided practice is found in a conclusion in a journalistic special on synthetic biology in The Economist in 2019:

Reprogramming nature (synthetic biology) is extremely convoluted, having evolved with no intention or guidance. But if you could synthesize nature, life could be transformed into something more amenable to an engineering approach, with well defined standard parts.

The Economist (Redesigning Life, April 6th, 2019)

The idea that plants and animals are meaningless bundles of matter that are wholly composed of well defined standard parts that science can master as an engineering approach is not plausible for several reasons.

For example, the idea vitality of nature – the foundation of human life – is a motive to question the validity of eugenics on nature before it is practiced and a core argument in this context could be that a purposeful natural environment and food source is a stronger foundation for human life.

This article will demonstrate how a fallacious dogmatic belief - specifically, the idea that scientific facts are valid without philosophy or a belief in uniformitarianism - fundamentally underlays synthetic biology and the broader concept of eugenics on nature.

In chapter ^ it is demonstrated that eugenics emerged from a centuries old emancipation-of-science movement that seeks to rid science of moral constraints in order for science to become the master of itself (independent of philosophy), an ideological movement known as scientism.

This article provides a brief philosophical overview of eugenics' history in chapter ^, its role in the Nazi Holocaust in chapter ^, and its modern manifestations in chapter ^.

Ultimately, this philosophical exploration reveals how eugenics, at its core, resides on the essence of inbreeding, which is known to cause an accumulation of weakness and fatal problems in the infinite scope of time.

A philosopher on the discussion forum of Philosophy Now magazine captured the essence of eugenics as following:

blond hair and blue eyes for everyone

utopia

A Short Introduction

Eugenics is an emergent topic in recent years. In 2019, a group of over 11,000 scientists argued that eugenics can be used to reduce world population.

(2020) Eugenics is trending. That's a problem. Any attempt to reduce world population must focus on reproductive justice. Manba: Washington Post | PDF backup

Richard DawkinsEvolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins — best known for his book The Selfish Gene — provoked controversy when he tweeted that while eugenics is morally deplorable, it would work.

Manba: Richard Dawkins on Twitter

What is Eugenics?

Charles Darwin

Francis Galton, a cousin of Darwin, coined the term eugenics in 1883 in his work Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development. Based on Darwin's concept natural selection, he advocated for the improvement of human hereditary traits through selective breeding.

Pan Guangdan

In China where eugenics is very popular today, Pan Guangdan is credited with the development of Chinese eugenics, yousheng (优生), during the 1930s. Pan Guangdan received eugenic training at Columbia University from Charles Benedict Davenport, a prominent American eugenicist.

The original logo of the eugenics congress, founded in London in 1912, describes eugenics as following:

Eugenics

Eugenics is the self direction of human evolution. Like a tree, eugenics draws its materials from many sources and organizes them into an harmonious entity.

Scientism itself originates from an even older intellectual movement: the emancipation-of-science movement. This centuries-old movement seeks to liberate science from the constraints of religion and philosophy to allow it to become its own master.

Friedrich NietzscheThe declaration of independence of the scientific man, his emancipation from philosophy, is one of the subtler after-effects of democratic organization and disorganization: the self- glorification and self-conceitedness of the learned man is now everywhere in full bloom, and in its best springtime – which does not mean to imply that in this case self-praise smells sweet. Here also the instinct of the populace cries, “Freedom from all masters!” and after science has, with the happiest results, resisted theology, whose hand-maid it had been too long, it now proposes in its wantonness and indiscretion to lay down laws for philosophy, and in its turn to play the master – what am I saying! to play the PHILOSOPHER on its own account.

This drive for scientific autonomy creates a paradigm where the interests of science itself are elevated to the status of highest good. The outer manifestation of this mindset is scientism, which in turn gives rise to ideologies like eugenics.

German philosopher Max Horkheimer described the situation as following in his book Eclipse of Reason in 1947:

Science's emancipation from philosophy birthed a new barbarism—one that worships efficiency and discards the human.

With eugenics, humanity aspires to move towards an ultimate state as perceived from an external, objective scientific viewpoint. This approach stands in stark opposition to nature's inherent tendency towards diversity, which fosters resilience and strength in the infinite scope of time.

The Essence of Inbreeding

An attempt to stand above life, as being life, results in a figurative 🪨 stone that sinks in the infinite 🌀 ocean of time.

In contrast to the diversity-seeking tendencies of natural evolution, eugenics moves inwards in the context of the infinite scope of time. This inward movement represents a fundamental escape attempt, a retreat from the fundamental uncertainty of nature into an illusory certain empirical realm.

The eugenic tendency exists in nature in the form of kind (species, familiarity) of which the concept of inbreeding is a result, not by sheer mathematical principle, but by the fundamental eugenic tendency for escaping the uncertainty of nature into an empirical realm: the kind, species, family. In a sense, this eugenic tendency actually can be considered a highest moral good. The problems inherent to inbreeding are not a mathematical causal result of increased similarity and reduced diversity per se, but in how the fundamental idea of achieved certainty paradoxically undermines what is essential to come about in the first place, which in practice implies what is fundamental to the immune system in how it relates to an aspired state of health in the future (a beyond the animal) rather than an actual state of health.

The output of science is fundamentally historical and provides a perspective rooted in past observations and data. When science, with its inherently historical perspective, is elevated to the status of a 🧭 guiding principle for life and evolution, humanity metaphorically sticks its head into its own anus.

The resulting situation is analogous to inbreeding, where the gene pool becomes increasingly limited and vulnerable.

Cow Cow

While there are 9 million diary cows in the US, from a genetic perspective there are just 50 cows alive.

Chad Dechow Chad Dechow – an associate professor of dairy cattle genetics – and others say there is so much genetic similarity among cows, the effective population size is less than 50. If cows were wild animals, that would put them in the category of critically endangered species.

Leslie B. Hansen It's pretty much one big inbred family says Leslie B. Hansen, a cow expert and professor at the University of Minnesota. Fertility rates are affected by inbreeding, and already, cow fertility has dropped significantly. Also, when close relatives are bred, serious health problems could be lurking.

(2021) The way we breed cows is setting them up for extinction Manba: Quartz | PDF backup

Fundamentally, eugenics depends on a dogmatic assumption of certainty (a certain empirical realm) and is rooted in a belief in uniformitarianism. This philosophically unjustified certainty, as explored further in chapter ^, is what allows scientism to place scientific interests above 🧭 morality, while in practice, by attempting to stand above life while being life itself, eugenics creates a self-referential loop that, like inbreeding, leads to accumulating weakness rather than strength and resilience in time.

The History of Eugenics

While eugenics is often associated with Nazi Germany and its racial cleansing policies, the ideology's roots extend far deeper into history, predating the Nazi party by centuries.

The implementation of eugenic policies required a level of moral compromise that many found difficult to reconcile. This led to a culture of obfuscation and deceit within the scientific community, as researchers and policymakers sought ways to justify and enact their beliefs. The demand for individuals willing to carry out these morally reprehensible acts ultimately paved the way for the rise of regimes like Nazi Germany.

The Nazis didn't need psychiatry, it was the other way around, psychiatry needed the Nazis.

A video report by Holocaust scholar Ernst Klee:

Diagnose and Exterminate

Sichten und Vernichten

Since 1907, several Western nations, including the United States, Canada, Switzerland, Finland, Norway, and Sweden, began implementing eugenics-based sterilization programs targeting individuals deemed unfit for reproductions.

Since 1914, a full two decades before the rise of the Nazi party, German psychiatry initiated the systematic extermination of patients classified as life unworthy of life through deliberate starvation, a practice that persisted until 1949, outlasting even the fall of the Third Reich.

(1998) Euthanasia by Starvation in Psychiatry 1914-1949 Manba: Semantic Scholar | Book Publisher | PDF preview (German)

The systematic extermination of people deemed life-unworthy developed naturally from within psychiatry as a honourable branch of the international scientific community.

The Nazi Holocaust's death camp extermination program began with the murder of over 300,000 psychiatric patients.

The next section will delve deeper into psychiatry's role as the cradle of eugenics.

Psychiatry: The Cradle of Eugenics

The historical trajectory of modern psychiatry as a specialized medical field is inextricably intertwined with the emergence of eugenics. This linkage is neither coincidental nor superficial—it is structurally embedded in psychiatry's foundational psychopathology theory and institutional evolution.

Psychopathology, in its essence, is the belief that mental phenomena can be fully explained through causal, deterministic mechanisms. This idea forms the philosophical justification for psychiatry as a medical practice, distinguishing it from psychology.

Stanford University's article on the philosophy of psychiatry stated the following:

If psychiatry is really a branch of medicine, we should see the specific causal hypotheses emerge about mechanisms that cause the symptoms of mental illness. Psychopathology is to be identified as the departure of a psychological system from its proper state.

Philosophy of Psychiatry Manba: plato.stanford.edu

Eugenics Congress Flyer, London, 1912 Eugenics is the self direction of human evolution

The History of Psychopathology

In 1845, German psychiatrist Wilhelm Griesinger's dictum Geisteskrankheiten sind Gehirnkrankheiten (Mental diseases are brain diseases) grounded psychiatry in neurology and biological mechanisms for the first time. His textbook Pathologie und Therapie der psychischen Krankheiten (Pathology and Therapy of Mental Disorders) argued for a somatic (bodily) basis for insanity.

Prior to Griesinger, psychiatry was called alienism, a term derived from the French aliénation mentale (mental derangement), and was heavily influenced by philosophical, moral, and environmental models (e.g., French alienist Philippe Pinel's moral treatment).

German physician Johann Christian Reil first introduced the concept Psychiatrie in his essay Über den Begriff der Psychiaterie (On the Concept of Psychiatry) in 1808 however the term remained dormant until Griesinger anchored mental illness in somatic pathology, or psychopathology, arguing that disorders of the mind must originate in the brain, just as diseases of the liver affect digestion.

Griesinger's textbook was seminal for the field psychiatry and became a foundational textbook globally. It was translated into many languages and was the core textbook at many Universities for over half a century. Griesinger's biological psychiatry became the universal paradigm, displacing moral and religious models.

German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin, the most influential psychiatrist of the early 20th century, built on Griesinger's biological framework and cemented the term psychiatry globally. Kraepelin framed mental syndromes (clusters of symptoms) such as dementia praecox (schizophrenia) as hereditary degeneration—a direct Darwinian-Griesinger synthesis. Mental illnesses were seen as failures of evolutionarily programmed mechanisms, an inherently eugenic view that aligns with the view of modern biopsychiatry.

Historian Edward Shorter observed:

Griesinger made psychiatry biological; Darwin made biology historical. Only together could they explain why human minds break.

Teleonomy

On a more fundamental level psychopathology and the mechanistic view of the mind are rooted in teleonomy or the study of goal-directed behavior in biological systems as programmed by natural selection.

While the concept teleonomy was formally coined by evolutionary biologist Colin Pittendrigh in 1958 and popularized by evolutionary philosopher Ernst Mayr in the 1960s, it emerged from a philosophical lineage tracing back to philosopher Immanuel Kant's teleomechanism—a hybrid of the mechanistic causality of philosopher René Descartes and inherent purpose.

Ernst Mayr emphasized that teleonomic statements describe programmed activities (e.g., DNA-directed development, instinctive behaviors) that have been shaped by natural selection to achieve specific ends (survival, reproduction). The program (genetic and/or learned) is the mechanistic cause within the organism, while its existence is explained by the historical cause of natural selection.

Griesinger's work adopted mechanism of René Descartes but discarded dualism and metaphysics. While Griesinger explicity omitted to answer the why question and argued Psychiatry must become a natural science or it is nothing., his work embodied the core principles of teleonomy.

Around the same time Charles Darwin provided a solution for the why question – natural selection – that could explain the appearance of purpose in natural phenomena without invoking a God, intelligent design or conscious intent.

Traits that enhanced survival and reproduction were preserved, making organisms seem exquisitely designed for their environment. According to Darwin, purpose in biology was an illusion generated by differential survival.

Griesinger's students (e.g., Meynert, Wernicke) expanded his model into evolutionary psychiatry.

Ernst Mayr observed:

Griesinger explained the proximate cause (brain pathology). Darwin explained the ultimate cause (natural selection). Both are necessary—neither is sufficient alone.

French philosopher Michel Foucault observed:

Griesinger's psychiatry was a bridge between the clinical gaze and the evolutionary narrative—a bridge built from bricks of mechanism, waiting for Darwin's cement of purpose.

The Emergence of Eugenics

Eugenics was a direct consequence of the mechanistic ideas underlying psychopathology and developed alongside psychiatry's transition into a medical specialism.

Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, argued in 1883:

If natural selection shapes species, science must shape humanity by selecting desirable traits and eliminating defects.

Mental differences (e.g., schizophrenia, feeble-mindedness) were classified as biological errors and mechanical failures.

Griesinger's textbooks laid the foundation for eugenics. In his book Mental Pathology and Therapeutics of 1867 that became the core psychiatry textbook globally, he stated:

The physician serves not just the individual, but life itself—its preservation and refinement.

Kraepelin (Griesinger's intellectual heir) who would introduce the term psychiatry globally created diagnostic categories specifically to identify lives unworthy of life. In his book Etiology of Insanity he stated:

Griesinger's textbook is the cornerstone of modern psychiatry. His principle—that insanity stems from biological defect—guides our duty to prevent hereditary degeneration.

Kraepelin pioneered the concept negative selection value. In his essay Die Erscheinungsformen des Irreseins (The Manifestations of Insanity), published in 1908, Kraepelin stated:

Hereditary degeneration [...] produces individuals whose existence represents a negative selection value [negative Auslesewert]. Their survival contradicts the principle of natural selection, as they propagate defective traits that weaken the species' vitality. Psychiatry must recognize these biological threats.

In his textbook Psychiatrie: Ein Lehrbuch (Psychiatry: A Textbook) of 1913 Kraepelin stated in chapter Degeneration and Constitution:

The feeble-minded, the habitual criminals, and the prostitutes born of degenerate families [...] perpetuate hereditary damage [Erbschaden]. Their proliferation represents a negative racial value [negativer Rassenwert], demanding preventive measures.

In 1920, psychiatrist Alfred Hoche and jurist Karl Binding published Die Freigabe der Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens (Permitting the Exterminaton of Life Unworthy of Life) that reveals how Griesinger's mechanistic ideas resulted in the logic of eugenic extermination.

For incurable biological defects, the ultimate therapy is termination—a mercy to society and the individual. The physician's duty extends beyond the individual to the species. Eliminating empty human shells is medical hygiene.

(1920) Permitting the Exterminaton of Life Unworthy of Life Source: Psychiatry professor Alfred Hoche, University of Berlin

Hoche positioned himself as the direct ideological heir to Griesinger's mechanistic psychiatry. As Professor of Psychiatry at Berlin's Charité Hospital—Griesinger's former chair—Hoche embodied the legacy. He teached Griesinger's textbooks and his 1920 manifesto was written in the same city where Griesinger founded scientific psychiatry.

Historian Edward Shorter concludes in his book A History of Psychiatry (1997):

Without Griesinger's psychiatry textbook, the scientific legitimacy of Nazi psychiatry would have been unthinkable.

Historian Paul Weindling concludes in his book Victims and Survivors of Nazi Human Experiments (2015):

Kraepelin's negative Auslesewert was the scientific cornerstone of Nazi extermination programs.

The tragic thing is, the psychiatrists didn't need a warrant. They acted on their own initiative. They did not carry out a death sentence handed down by someone else. They were the legislators who set the rules for deciding who should die; they were the administrators who worked out the procedures, supplied patients and places, and determined the methods of killing; they pronounced a sentence of life or death in each individual case; they were the executioners who carried out the sentences or – without being forced to do so – handed over their patients to be murdered in other institutions; they guided the slow dying and often watched it.

Peter R. Breggin

The bond between Adolf Hitler and psychiatrists was so close that much of Mein Kampf literally corresponds to the language and tone of the major international journals and psychiatric textbooks of the period. To quote some of many such passages in Mein Kampf:

  • To demand that the feeble-minded be prevented from producing equally feeble-minded progeny is a demand made for the purest of reasons and, if carried out systematically, represents the most humane act of mankind…
  • Those who are physically and mentally unhealthy and unworthy should not let their suffering continue in the bodies of their children…
  • Preventing the ability and opportunity to procreate in the physically degenerate and mentally ill… would not only liberate humanity from an immense misfortune, but also lead to a recovery that seems hardly conceivable today.

After taking power, Hitler gained support from psychiatrists and social scientists from all over the world. Many articles in the world's leading medical journals studied and praised Hitler's eugenic legislation and policies.

Holocaust scholar Ernst Klee, cited in chapter ^, confirmed these observations with the following:

The Nazis didn't need psychiatry, it was the other way around, psychiatry needed the Nazis.

The Attempt to Break Free from Morality

The emancipation-of-science movement, as explored in chapter ^, laid the groundwork for a dangerous paradigm: the elevation of scientific interests to the status of highest good. This shift, born from the desire for scientific autonomy, has given rise to scientism - a worldview that places scientific knowledge above all other forms of understanding, including moral and philosophical considerations.

This elevation of science to supreme authority creates a fundamental inclination to break free from the constraints of morality and philosophy. The logic is seductive yet perilous: if scientific progress is the ultimate good, then any moral considerations that might impede that progress become obstacles to be overcome or discarded.

GM: science out of control (2018) Immoral advances: Is science out of control? To most scientists, moral objections to their work are not valid: science, by definition, is morally neutral, so any moral judgement on it simply reflects scientific illiteracy. Manba: New Scientist | PDF backup

Eugenics emerges as a natural extension of this mindset. When science is viewed as the arbiter of all value, the idea of improving humanity through genetic manipulation seems not only possible but imperative. The moral qualms that might give us pause are dismissed as antiquated thinking, impediments to the march of scientific progress.

This attempt to divorce science from morality is not merely misguided; it is potentially catastrophic. As we will explore in the following section, the belief that scientific facts can stand alone, without philosophical grounding, is a dangerous fallacy - one that opens the door to practices that may irreparably harm nature.

Uniformitarianism: The Dogma Behind Eugenics

When science strives to emancipate from philosophy, it necessarily embraces a form of certainty in its facts. This certainty is not merely empirical, but fundamentally philosophical - a certainty that allows scientific truth to stand apart from morality. This separation is the very foundation upon which eugenics builds its case.

The dogmatic belief in uniformitarianism - that scientific facts are valid independent of mind and time - provides the dogmatic underpinning for this certainty. It's a belief that many scientists implicitly hold, often describing their ethical position as being humble in the face of observation while paradoxically placing scientific truth above moral good.

To most scientists, moral objections to their work are not valid: science, by definition, is morally neutral, so any moral judgement on it simply reflects scientific illiteracy.

(2018) Immoral advances: Is science out of control? ~ New Scientist
William James

Truth is one species of good, and not, as is usually supposed, a category distinct from good, and co-ordinate with it. The true is the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief, and good, too, for definite, assignable reasons.

James's insight reveals the dogmatic fallacy at the heart of uniformitarianism: the idea that scientific truth can be separated from moral good. This fallacy is not merely an abstract philosophical concern; it forms the very foundation of eugenic thinking.

As we will explore in the next section, the dogmatic fallacy at the heart of uniformitarianism renders science incapable of serving as a guiding principle for life.

Science as a Guiding Principle for Life?

woman moral compass

The emancipation of science from philosophy, as explored in chapter ^, has led to a dangerous assumption: that science can serve as a guiding principle for life. This belief stems from the dogmatic fallacy of uniformitarianism, which posits that scientific facts are valid independent of mind and time. While this assumption may seem inconsequential in the practical realm of scientific progress, it becomes profoundly problematic when applied to questions of human evolution and the future of life itself.

The utility of science is evident in its countless successes, but as William James astutely observed, scientific truth is merely one species of good, not a category distinct from or superior to morality. This insight reveals the fundamental flaw in attempting to elevate science to the role of life's guiding principle: it fails to account for the a priori conditions that make value itself possible in the first place.

When we consider eugenics – the attempt to direct human evolution through scientific means – we confront questions that transcend the empirical realm. These are questions about the very nature of life and value.

David Hume (2019) Science and Morals: Can morality be deduced from the facts of science? The issue should have been settled by philosopher David Hume in 1740: the facts of science provide no basis for values. Yet, like some kind of recurrent meme, the idea that science is omnipotent and will sooner or later solve the problem of values seems to resurrect with every generation. Source: Duke University: New Behaviorism

Hume's insight, often overlooked in the fervor of scientific progress, reminds us that science cannot, by its very nature, provide the moral framework necessary to guide life's most profound decisions. When we attempt to use science as such a framework, particularly in the realm of eugenics, we risk reducing the rich tapestry of life to a set of empirical data points, devoid of the very essence that makes life possible.


Eugenics Today

The legacy of eugenics continues to cast a long shadow over modern society, manifesting in subtle yet pervasive ways that demand our attention and scrutiny.

Eric Lichtblau(2014) The Nazis Next Door: How America Became a Safe Haven for Hitler's Men Source: Amazon.comwayne allyn root (2020) Is America Starting Down the Path of Nazi Germany? I cannot express how truly sad writing this op-ed has made me. But I'm a patriotic American. And I'm an American Jew. I have studied the beginnings of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. And I can clearly see parallels with what is happening in America today.

OPEN YOUR EYES. Study what happened in Nazi Germany during the infamous Kristallnacht. The night of Nov. 9-10, 1938, marked the beginning of the Nazis' attack on the Jews. Jewish homes and businesses were looted, desecrated and burned while the police and “good people” stood by and watched. Nazis laughed and cheered as books were burned.
Source: Townhall.com

Root's observations serve as a chilling reminder that the conditions that once allowed eugenic ideologies to flourish can resurface, even in ostensibly democratic societies.

natasha lennard(2020) Forced sterilization of poor women of color There need be no explicit policy of forced sterilization for a eugenicist system to exist. Normalized neglect and dehumanization are sufficient. These are Trumpian specialties, yes, but as American as apple pie.” Source: The Intercept

Lennard's insight reveals how eugenic principles can operate covertly within societal structures, perpetuating systemic inequalities and dehumanization without explicit policies.

Embryo Selection

Perhaps most alarmingly, the resurgence of eugenic thinking is evident in the growing acceptance of embryo selection. This modern iteration of eugenics demonstrates how easily such ideas can be embraced when framed in terms of parental choice and scientific progress.

(2017) 🇨🇳 China's embrace of embryo selection raises thorny questions about eugenics In the West, embryo selection still raises fears about the creation of an elite genetic class, and critics talk of a slippery slope towards eugenics, a word that elicits thoughts of Nazi Germany and racial cleansing. In China, however, eugenics lacks such baggage. The Chinese word for eugenics, yousheng, is used explicitly as a positive in almost all conversations about eugenics. Yousheng is about giving birth to children of better quality. Manba: Nature | PDF backup

(2017) 🇨🇳 Eugenics 2.0: We're at the Dawn of Choosing Our Kids Will you be among the first parents that pick their kids' obstinacy? As machine learning unlocks predictions from DNA databases, scientists say parents could have options to select their kids like never before possible. Manba: MIT Technology Review | PDF backup

These developments in embryo selection represent a modern manifestation of eugenic thinking, cloaked in the language of parental choice and technological progress. They serve as a stark reminder that the fundamental moral questions posed by eugenics remain unresolved, even as our technological capabilities expand.

Defense of 🍃 Nature

This article has demonstrated that eugenics can be considered a corruption of nature from nature's own perspective. By attempting to direct evolution through an external, anthropocentric lens, eugenics moves counter to the intrinsic processes that foster resilience and strength in time.

The fundamental intellectual flaws of eugenics are difficult to overcome , especially when it concerns a practical defense. This difficulty in articulating a defense against eugenics illuminates why many advocates for nature and animals may retreat to an intellectual back seat and are silent when it concerns eugenics.

woman moral compass
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