Dobzhansky and the Biology of Democracy: The Moral and Political Significance of Genetic Variation

In this paper, Dobzhansky serves to illustrate the political activity— in the form of science— of many American scientists in response to the rise of fascism and in reaction to the threateningly antidemo­ cratic agendas and messages of earlier science.

Abstract

WHAT CAN science do for democracy? It was a question raised often in the United States in the late 1930s and 1940s. Prompting it was a serious threat to democracy—the rise and spread of fascism, combined with a nagging suspicion (not without grounds) that American science had in the past served more to undermine the cause of democracy than to advance it. In other words, what—for a change—could scientists do to support democracy in that trying time? Among the scientists who posed the question and tried to answer it was the barely American, Russian emigre Theodosius Dobzhansky. In this paper, Dobzhansky serves to illustrate the political activity— in the form of science—of many American scientists in response to the rise of fascism and in reaction to the threateningly antidemo­ cratic agendas and messages of earlier science. Dobzhansky is an especially interesting case because his main area of research—genetic variation and its role in evolution—had traditionally inspired so much skepticism about, and downright hos­ tility toward, democratic ideals. By looking closely at Dobzhansky's work, it is also possible to see the difficulties facing a common and otherwise understandable view of the political agendas of American scientists at the time. It is often argued, of course, that American sci­ entists responded to the rise of fascism by defending the intellectual freedom and political autonomy of science. But in fact scientists like Dobzhansky were heavily into broader political ideology—the ideol­ ogy of democracy. As Gregg Mitman suggests in his recent, elegant studies of American biology, in the interwar years the American biol­ ogist came forward as democracy's greatest savior. 1