Racist and sexist citations from Darwin
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On the subject of sexual differences, so often a surrogate for racial attitudes, Darwin writes in The Descent of Man (and with direct analogy to cultural variation):
"It is generally admitted that with woman the powers of intuition, of rapid perception, and perhaps of imitation, are more strongly marked than in man; but some, at least, of these faculties are characteristic of the lower races, and therefore of a past and lower state of civilization. The chief distinction in the intellectual powers of the two sexes is shown by man attaining to a higher eminence, in whatever he takes up, than woman can attain — whether requiring deep thought, reason, or imagination, or merely the use of the senses and hands."
Darwin attributes these differences to the evolutionary struggle that males must pursue for success in mating: "These various faculties will thus have been continually put to the test, and selected during manhood." In a remarkable passage, he then expresses thanks that evolutionary innovations of either sex tend to pass, by inheritance, to both sexes — lest the disparity between men and women become ever greater by virtue of exclusively male accomplishment:
"It is, indeed, fortunate that the law of the equal transmission of characters to both sexes has commonly prevailed throughout the whole class of mammals; otherwise it is probable that man would have become as superior in mental endowment to woman, as the peacock is in ornamental plumage to the peahen."
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(Stephen Jay Gould, Eight Little Piggies, essay 18: The Moral State of Tahiti — and of Darwin)
Cited as a historical testimony to the scientific thought of the Victorian era, not as something to appreciate. I wish we could just laugh at that as a relict of weird past…
@jimcarroll@futurist.info
