Robert M. Young Online Writings
The Writings of Professor Robert M. Young
'Evolutionary Biology and Ideology: Then and Now' 153k
This is a much-revised version of a paper I contributed to a conference on 'The Social Impact of Modern Biology', which was the founding event of the British Society for Social Responsibility in Science in 1970. It examines critically the assumptions of Darwinian and nineteenth-century biology. The people I met there joined me in creating the Radical Science Journal and the conference on 'Self-Management in Science'. I suppose it was my first explicitly radical essay, written at a time when I was beginning to think of the critique of scientific rationality in terms of the sociology of knowledge (canvassed in the extensive ruminative notes) and libertarian Marxism. It follows on from 'Malthus and the Evolutionists' and leads on to 'The Historiographic and Ideological Contexts of the Nineteenth-century Debate on Man's Place in Nature'. Other versions of the essay appeared in the UK and US editions of the book of the conference, edited by Watson Fuller (Anchor and Routledge). This one appeared in Science Studies 1: 177-296, 1971.