Peter J. Bowler published an article in Science (Jan. 9, 2009) titled “Darwin’s Originality.” While much of Bowler’s analysis is just plain wrong (e.g., Darwin’s theory being already “in the air” is NOT accurately premised largely upon Wallace co-discovery of natural selection as Bowler suggests but upon much deeper secularizing processes coextensive with skeptics like David Hume and positivists like Auguste Comte, both of whom deeply influenced Darwin, and ideas even predating them), but another of his comments is just plain frightening. Toward the end of his essay Bowler distances Darwinism from the racial hygiene of the Nazis but then writes the following: “But by proposing that evolution worked primarily through the elimination of useless variants, Darwin created an image that could all too easily be exploited by those who wanted the human race to conform to their own pre-existing ideals. In the same way, his popularization of the struggle metaphor focused attention onto the individualistic aspects of Spencer’s philosophy.” Lauding “modern science” for recognizing “Darwin’s key insights,” Bowler admits that some of them are “profoundly disturbing” and that “the theory, in turn, played into the way those implications were developed by later generations. This is not,” he adds, “a simple matter of science being ‘misused’ by social commentators, because Darwin ‘s theorizing would almost certainly have been different had he not drawn inspiration from social, as well as scientific, influences. We may well feel uncomfortable with those aspects of his theory today, especially in light of their subsequent applications to human affairs. But if we accept science’s power to upset the traditional foundations of how we think about the world, we should also accept its potential to interact with moral values [emphasis added].”
So what is Bowler saying here? Should we adopt the standards of Peter Singer? Are we all due for a little “culling of the unfit”? Are we to sacrifice ethics on the alter of Darwinian “science”? Bowler’s conclusion regarding Darwin’s “originality” is hardly the uplifting message one would expect.