Abstract
Prior to August Weismann’s 1889 germ-plasm theory, social reformers believed that humans could inherit the effects of a salubrious environment and, by passing environmentally-induced modifications to their offspring, achieve continuous progress. Weismann’s theory disrupted this logic and caused many to fear that they had little control over human development. As numerous historians have observed, this contributed to the birth of the eugenics movement. However, through an examination of the work of social scientists Lester Frank Ward, Richard T. Ely, Amos Griswold Warner, James Mark Baldwin, Simon Nelson Patten, Alfred Kroeber, Walter Robinson Smith, and Luther Lee Bernard, I demonstrate that Weismann’s ideas also prompted scholars to create of theories of human progress in which the social environment had a central role and biological heredity had a diminished one. Furthermore, in creating a new theory of social progress based on a concept called “social heredity,” the thinkers surveyed in this article separated biological and social thought and asserted the independence of the American social sciences. I argue that this represents an important moment in the maturation of the human sciences, and I suggest that the germ-plasm theory of heredity deserves a larger place in histories of the development of the American social scientific disciplines.
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Notes
Ohad Parnes has observed that in Western culture at the end of the eighteenth century, a new understanding of the idea of “generations” emerged, and thinkers began to conceive of those who were born at the same time as sharing common traits (Parnes, 2007, 316–317). Generations, furthermore, were thought of as “well-defined social and cultural collectives” and “egalitarian units,” which stood in contrast to “the old model of royal genealogies” (Parnes, 2007, 317).
The unofficial leaders of American neo-Lamarckism were paleontologists Edward Drinker Cope and Alpheus Hyatt. For an examination of neo-Lamarckism in American paleontology, see Rainger 1988, 219–245.
Peter J. Bowler emphasizes that neo-Lamarckism and neo-Darwinism were among the many evolutionary theories circulating during this period. Others included orthogenesis and mutualism (Bowler 1983, 4).
Ward credited paleontologist A.S. Packard with developing the term neo-Lamarckism and Canadian biologist George Romanes with creating the term neo-Darwinism. He did not specify who in the United States championed the latter school, he contended that it had the strongest following in England (Ward 1891a, 44).
According to Mark Pittenger, Lewis and Ely were unique among socialist-leaning American thinkers who believed that Weismann’s claims strengthened the “environmental argument” by demonstrating that the “brutalized character of the slum dweller” would not be passed on through heredity (Pittenger 1993, 142). Pittenger claims that in the wake of Weismann’s claims other socialists, including Herman Moellering, turned to neo-Lamarckism.
For a more complete account of Weismann’s theory of panmixia, as well as of the biologist’s life and work, see Frederick Churchill’s August Weismann: Development, Heredity, and Evolution (Churchill 1968, 195).
Though Ward was aware of Baldwin’s work on social heredity, he did not cite it as an inspiration for his own use of the term—perhaps deliberately. Baldwin’s archival material suggests that Baldwin and Franklin Giddings had feuded over an undisclosed matter, and Ward sided with Giddings (Albion Small to Lester Frank Ward and Franklin H. Giddings. 22 Jan. 1901. Ward (Lester Frank) Collection, 1860–1913. Box 30, Folder 13. John Hay Library. Providence, RI: Brown University). Ward furthermore refused to write a review of one of Baldwin’s books for the Monist. (J.M. McCormick to Lester Frank Ward. 28 April 1898. Ward (Lester Frank) Collection, 1860–1913. Box 23, Folder 16. John Hay Library. Providence, RI: Brown University).
Patten did not specify from whom he derived this idea, and did not cite Baldwin, Ely, or Ward.
During this period, University of Chicago sociologists Robert Park and Ernest W. Burgess also incorporated the concepts of “social inheritance” and “social heritage” into their work (Park and Burgess 1921, 408). Burgess, for example, devoted an entire chapter of his book The Function of Socialization in Social Evolution (1916) to social heritage (Burgess 1916, 21). Burgess referred to social heritage as “the extra-organic equipment of the race” and argued that social heritage was “the capital which each succeeding generation receives from the past” (Burgess 1916, 52, 22). Like earlier thinkers, Burgess conceived of social heredity as a force of social evolution that was separate from biological heredity. Though he did not connect the term to Weismann’s ideas, he cited Lester Frank Ward’s Applied Sociology (1906) as a source of inspiration for the conception of social heritage and cited Baldwin’s work for shedding light on the importance of traits “acquired by imitation,” as opposed to those that were “inborn” (Burgess 1916, 22, 74).
In the book, Conn did specify who influenced his conception of social heredity.
Bernard (1916).
In his later work, Bernard also discussed “social heritage,” through which, he argued, individuals absorbed cultural symbols, “systems of knowledge, such as sciences and philosophies… and social values” (Bernard 1926, 288).
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Raymer, E.J. Human progress by human effort: neo-Darwinism, social heredity, and the professionalization of the American social sciences, 1889–1925. HPLS 40, 63 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-018-0225-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-018-0225-y