Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
a common premise, and in consequence of a common blindness. Because
religionists like Bryan also believed that scientific truth was religious truth
and religious truth scientific truth, they expended great energy attacking
evolutionary science that might have been more productively marshaled
against its scientistic misapplications. Had Bryan been more discerning,
he might have recognized that it was careless political aspirations that had
caused evolutionary ideas to slip from the grasp of scientific discipline. The
poison of Prussian imperialism came not from science but from a perverse
alchemy experiment. Had he recognized that it was only a mythologized
doppelg�nger of evolutionary science that was inspiring the downward spi-
nger of evolutionary science that was inspiring the downward spi-
ral of civilized mores in Europe and the United States, he might have staged
a more meaningful spiritual and political campaign.
Second guessing history is a dicey business. But let us imagine what
might have happened in 1925 had Bryan been capable of distinguishing
evolutionary science from evolutionism. It turns out that a contemporary
example of this convergence of science and ideology was right under his
nose in the very textbook that the prosecution introduced as evidence
against John Scopes, George W. Hunter's
Civic Biology.
There is in fact
surprisingly little information about evolution in Hunter's topic. Its entire
treatment of the subject accounts for only three pages, and when evolution
does come into view, evolutionism is always in tow. This becomes evident
in the topic's opening section entitled “Biology in its Relation to Society,”
where the author asserts that “society itself is founded upon the principles
which biology teaches.”
�nger of evolutionary science that was inspiring the downward spi-
Plants and animals are living things, taking what they can from their
surroundings; they enter into competition with one another, and those
which are best fitted for life outstrip the others. Animals and plants tend
to vary each from its nearest relative in all details of structure. The strong
may thus hand down to their offspring the characteristics which make
them winners. Health and strength of body and mind are factors which
tell in winning.
35
We soon learn that this biological fitness is the basis of social success as well,
that because “unselfishness exists in the natural world as well as among
the highest members of society” we will be made “better men and women”
through the study of biology.
Animals, lowly and complex, sacrifice their comfort and their very lives
for their young. In the insect communities the welfare of the individual
