Degeneration
Encyclopedia
The idea of degeneration had significant influence on science
, art
and politics
from the 1850s to the 1950s. The social theory
developed consequently from Charles Darwin
's Theory of Evolution. Evolution meant that mankind's development was no longer fixed and certain, but could change and evolve or degenerate into an unknown future, possibly a bleak future that clashes with the analogy between evolution and civilization as a progressive positive direction.
As a consequence, theorists assumed the human species might be overtaken by a more adaptable species or circumstances might change and suit a more adapted species. Degeneration theory presented a pessimistic outlook for the future of western civilization
as it believed the progress of the 19th century had begun to work against itself.
and other monogenists such as Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon
, they were believers in the "Degeneration theory" of racial origins the theory claims that races can degenerate into "primitive" forms. Blumenbach claimed that Adam and Eve
were white
and that other races came about by degeneration from environmental factors such as the sun and poor dieting. Buffon believed that the degeneration could be reversed if proper environmental control was taken and that all contemporary forms of man could revert to the original Caucasian race
.
George Campbell, 8th Duke of Argyll
claimed that modern savages were degenerate descendants from originally civilized peoples. He opposed evolution
and followed cultural degeneration.
By 1890 there was a growing fear of degeneration sweeping across Europe creating disorders that led to poverty
, crime
, alcoholism
, moral perversion
and political violence
. Degeneration raised the possibility that Europe may be creating a class of degenerate people who may attack the social norms, this led to support for a strong state which polices degenerates out of existence with the assistance of scientific identification.
In the 1850s French
doctor Bénédict Morel
argued more vigorously that certain groups of people were degenerating, going backwards in terms of evolution
so each generation became weaker and weaker. This was based on pre-Darwinian
ideas of evolution, especially those of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
, who argued that acquired characteristics like drug abuse and sexual perversions, could be inherited. Genetic predisposition
s have been observed for alcoholism
and criminality.
The first scientific criminologist Cesare Lombroso
working in the 1880s believed he found evidence of degeneration by studying the corpses of criminals. After completing an autopsy
on murderer Villela he found the indentation where the spine meets the neck to be a signal of degeneration and subsequent criminality. Lombroso was convinced he had found the key to degeneration that had concerned liberal circles.
In Alexey Severtzov's typology of the evolution
directions this term is used in an ethically neutral way; it denotes such an evolutionary transformation that is accompanied by a decrease in complexity, as opposed to aromorphosis (accompanied by increase in complexity, cp. anagenesis
), and idioadaptation (this term designates such an evolutionary transformation that is accompanied by neither a decrease nor increase in complexity, cp. cladogenesis
) (see, e.g., Korotayev 2004).
in the 1880s which had elements considered by critics as degenerate and a book was written about this by the Zionist Max Nordau
. The book was called Entartung
- rendered in English as Degeneration. Max Nordau's Degeneration attempted to explain all modern art, music and literature by pointing out the degenerate characteristics of the artists involved. In this fashion a whole biological explanation for social problems was developed.
In the twentieth century, eradicating "degeneration" became a justification for various eugenic programs, mostly in Europe and the United States. Eugenicists adopted the concept, using it to justify the sterilization of the supposedly unfit. The Nazis
took up these eugenic efforts as well, including extermination, for those who would corrupt future generations. They also used the concept in art, banning "degenerate" (entartete) art and music: see degenerate art
.
For further information, see Daniel Pick's book Degeneration, or the work of Sander Gilman
.
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
, art
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....
and politics
Politics
Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...
from the 1850s to the 1950s. The social theory
Social theory
Social theories are theoretical frameworks which are used to study and interpret social phenomena within a particular school of thought. An essential tool used by social scientists, theories relate to historical debates over the most valid and reliable methodologies , as well as the primacy of...
developed consequently from Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
's Theory of Evolution. Evolution meant that mankind's development was no longer fixed and certain, but could change and evolve or degenerate into an unknown future, possibly a bleak future that clashes with the analogy between evolution and civilization as a progressive positive direction.
As a consequence, theorists assumed the human species might be overtaken by a more adaptable species or circumstances might change and suit a more adapted species. Degeneration theory presented a pessimistic outlook for the future of western civilization
Western culture
Western culture, sometimes equated with Western civilization or European civilization, refers to cultures of European origin and is used very broadly to refer to a heritage of social norms, ethical values, traditional customs, religious beliefs, political systems, and specific artifacts and...
as it believed the progress of the 19th century had begun to work against itself.
History
One of the earliest scientists to advocate degeneration was Johann Friedrich BlumenbachJohann Friedrich Blumenbach
Johann Friedrich Blumenbach was a German physician, physiologist and anthropologist, one of the first to explore the study of mankind as an aspect of natural history, whose teachings in comparative anatomy were applied to classification of what he called human races, of which he determined...
and other monogenists such as Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon was a French naturalist, mathematician, cosmologist, and encyclopedic author.His works influenced the next two generations of naturalists, including Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Georges Cuvier...
, they were believers in the "Degeneration theory" of racial origins the theory claims that races can degenerate into "primitive" forms. Blumenbach claimed that Adam and Eve
Adam and Eve
Adam and Eve were, according to the Genesis creation narratives, the first human couple to inhabit Earth, created by YHWH, the God of the ancient Hebrews...
were white
Caucasian race
The term Caucasian race has been used to denote the general physical type of some or all of the populations of Europe, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, Western Asia , Central Asia and South Asia...
and that other races came about by degeneration from environmental factors such as the sun and poor dieting. Buffon believed that the degeneration could be reversed if proper environmental control was taken and that all contemporary forms of man could revert to the original Caucasian race
Caucasian race
The term Caucasian race has been used to denote the general physical type of some or all of the populations of Europe, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, Western Asia , Central Asia and South Asia...
.
George Campbell, 8th Duke of Argyll
George Campbell, 8th Duke of Argyll
George John Douglas Campbell, 8th Duke of Argyll KG, KT, PC, FRS, FRSE , styled Marquess of Lorne until 1847, was a Scottish peer, Liberal politician as well as a writer on science, religion, and the politics of the 19th century.-Background:Argyll was born at Ardencaple Castle, Dunbartonshire, the...
claimed that modern savages were degenerate descendants from originally civilized peoples. He opposed evolution
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
and followed cultural degeneration.
By 1890 there was a growing fear of degeneration sweeping across Europe creating disorders that led to poverty
Poverty
Poverty is the lack of a certain amount of material possessions or money. Absolute poverty or destitution is inability to afford basic human needs, which commonly includes clean and fresh water, nutrition, health care, education, clothing and shelter. About 1.7 billion people are estimated to live...
, crime
Crime
Crime is the breach of rules or laws for which some governing authority can ultimately prescribe a conviction...
, alcoholism
Alcoholism
Alcoholism is a broad term for problems with alcohol, and is generally used to mean compulsive and uncontrolled consumption of alcoholic beverages, usually to the detriment of the drinker's health, personal relationships, and social standing...
, moral perversion
Perversion
Perversion is a concept describing those types of human behavior that are a serious deviation from what is considered to be orthodox or normal. Although it can refer to varying forms of deviation, it is most often used to describe sexual behaviors that are seen by an individual as abnormal,...
and political violence
Political violence
Political violence is a common means used by people and governments around the world to achieve political goals. Many groups and individuals believe that their political systems will never respond to their political demands. As a result they believe that violence is not only justified but also...
. Degeneration raised the possibility that Europe may be creating a class of degenerate people who may attack the social norms, this led to support for a strong state which polices degenerates out of existence with the assistance of scientific identification.
In the 1850s French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
doctor Bénédict Morel
Bénédict Morel
Bénédict Augustin Morel , was a French physician born in Vienna, Austria. He was an influential figure in the field of psychiatry during the mid-19th century....
argued more vigorously that certain groups of people were degenerating, going backwards in terms of evolution
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
so each generation became weaker and weaker. This was based on pre-Darwinian
Darwinism
Darwinism is a set of movements and concepts related to ideas of transmutation of species or of evolution, including some ideas with no connection to the work of Charles Darwin....
ideas of evolution, especially those of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de la Marck , often known simply as Lamarck, was a French naturalist...
, who argued that acquired characteristics like drug abuse and sexual perversions, could be inherited. Genetic predisposition
Genetic predisposition
A genetic predisposition is a genetic affectation which influences the phenotype of an individual organism within a species or population but by definition that phenotype can also be modified by the environmental conditions. In the rest of the population, conditions cannot have that effect...
s have been observed for alcoholism
Alcoholism
Alcoholism is a broad term for problems with alcohol, and is generally used to mean compulsive and uncontrolled consumption of alcoholic beverages, usually to the detriment of the drinker's health, personal relationships, and social standing...
and criminality.
The first scientific criminologist Cesare Lombroso
Cesare Lombroso
Cesare Lombroso, born Ezechia Marco Lombroso was an Italian criminologist and founder of the Italian School of Positivist Criminology. Lombroso rejected the established Classical School, which held that crime was a characteristic trait of human nature...
working in the 1880s believed he found evidence of degeneration by studying the corpses of criminals. After completing an autopsy
Autopsy
An autopsy—also known as a post-mortem examination, necropsy , autopsia cadaverum, or obduction—is a highly specialized surgical procedure that consists of a thorough examination of a corpse to determine the cause and manner of death and to evaluate any disease or injury that may be present...
on murderer Villela he found the indentation where the spine meets the neck to be a signal of degeneration and subsequent criminality. Lombroso was convinced he had found the key to degeneration that had concerned liberal circles.
In Alexey Severtzov's typology of the evolution
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
directions this term is used in an ethically neutral way; it denotes such an evolutionary transformation that is accompanied by a decrease in complexity, as opposed to aromorphosis (accompanied by increase in complexity, cp. anagenesis
Anagenesis
Anagenesis, also known as "phyletic change," is the evolution of species involving an entire population rather than a branching event, as in cladogenesis. When enough mutations have occurred and become stable in a population so that it is significantly differentiated from an ancestral population,...
), and idioadaptation (this term designates such an evolutionary transformation that is accompanied by neither a decrease nor increase in complexity, cp. cladogenesis
Cladogenesis
Cladogenesis is an evolutionary splitting event in a species in which each branch and its smaller branches forms a "clade", an evolutionary mechanism and a process of adaptive evolution that leads to the development of a greater variety of sister species...
) (see, e.g., Korotayev 2004).
Art
There was an art movement called decadent artDecadent movement
The Decadent movement was a late 19th century artistic and literary movement of Western Europe. It flourished in France, but also had devotees in England and throughout Europe, as well as in the United States.-Overview:...
in the 1880s which had elements considered by critics as degenerate and a book was written about this by the Zionist Max Nordau
Max Nordau
Max Simon Nordau , born Simon Maximilian Südfeld in Pest, Hungary, was a Zionist leader, physician, author, and social critic....
. The book was called Entartung
Degeneration (Max Nordau)
Degeneration , was Max Nordau's major work. It is a moralistic attack on so-called degenerate art, as well as a polemic against the effects of a range of rising social phenomena of the period, such as rapid urbanization and its perceived effects on the human body.-Summary:Nordau begins his work...
- rendered in English as Degeneration. Max Nordau's Degeneration attempted to explain all modern art, music and literature by pointing out the degenerate characteristics of the artists involved. In this fashion a whole biological explanation for social problems was developed.
In the twentieth century, eradicating "degeneration" became a justification for various eugenic programs, mostly in Europe and the United States. Eugenicists adopted the concept, using it to justify the sterilization of the supposedly unfit. The Nazis
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
took up these eugenic efforts as well, including extermination, for those who would corrupt future generations. They also used the concept in art, banning "degenerate" (entartete) art and music: see degenerate art
Degenerate art
Degenerate art is the English translation of the German entartete Kunst, a term adopted by the Nazi regime in Germany to describe virtually all modern art. Such art was banned on the grounds that it was un-German or Jewish Bolshevist in nature, and those identified as degenerate artists were...
.
For further information, see Daniel Pick's book Degeneration, or the work of Sander Gilman
Sander Gilman
Sander L. Gilman is an American cultural and literary historian, who is particularly well-known for his contributions to Jewish studies and the history of medicine. He is the author or editor of over eighty books....
.
See also
- Devolution
- DysgenicsDysgenicsDysgenics is the study of factors producing the accumulation and perpetuation of defective or disadvantageous genes and traits in offspring of a particular population or species. Dysgenic mutations have been studied in animals such as the mouse and the fruit fly...
- John Mundell III
- Societal collapseSocietal collapseSocietal collapse broadly includes both quite abrupt societal failures typified by collapses , as well as more extended gradual declines of superpowers...