Post by bjorn on Jun 10, 2009 7:35:32 GMT
As ususal, lot of interesting stuff in e-skeptic (e.g. links to new anti-christian humourous TV-shows), and a fair and rather fierce critique of a book attempting to remove the blame of Social Darwinism treatment - ref. www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/09-06-10
The book fails rather miserably, though.
Really the review of the week
Robert J. Richard’s "The Tragic Sense of Life: Ernst Haeckel and the Struggle Over Evolutionary Thought" promises to rescue Haeckel from a century and a half of disparaging assessments of his biology, and above all undertakes a refutation of the more recent and widely held belief that he was instrumental in formulating the basic tenets of Nazi ideology.
The common understanding among historians about the connection between Haeckel and Hitler is this: Adolf Hitler (b. 1889) came of age during the decade and a half following the publication in 1899 of Ernst Haeckel’s Riddle of the Universe, a runaway best seller that over the next two or three decades sold more copies internationally than the Bible and profoundly shaped the consciousness of the modern world.
Haeckel’s book imparted a rigid Social Darwinist message purportedly derived from science: politics is applied biology, the Jews were an inferior race compared with the Aryans, Christianity was a religion of weakness, and that eugenic action was necessary to protect the racial composition of society.
The book fails rather miserably, though.
The problem, however, is that a careful reading of Richards’ book uncovers a narrative not of insight and innovative thought about an essentially fascinating scientist and dominant public figure, but a process of selective quoting and blatant manipulation of evidence to support the author’s thesis; the book turns out to be the creation of an author who seems to have an axe to grind and does not shrink from assertions that are clearly based on a slew of disquieting misrepresentations.
Really the review of the week
