`Ape Science': A Multi-Pronged
Darwinian Attack Against Man
by Gabriele Liebig
On Aug. 18-19, the Schiller Institute held its traditional Summer Academy in Oberwesel, Germany, on the banks of the Rhine. The theme was "The Battle for the Mind--What Is the Prospect Facing Young People Today?" In last week's EIR, we published Lyndon LaRouche's keynote speech. Here, we present the Aug. 18 panel on the neo-Darwinian attack on man.
Gabriele Liebig is the editor of the German weekly Neue Solidarität, and an executive committee member of the International Caucus of Labor Committees in Europe.
Mankind is under attack, first of all by the globalized bubble economy. In part underlying the economic attack, IMF policy, prevention of development, etc., there is another, deeper-level attack against mankind. Right now it takes the following shapes:
1. In January, Hubert Markl, president of the Max Planck Society (the most renowned association of scientists in Germany) announced, that his greatest wish for the future is the reduction of the world's population to 2 billion people.[1] That is a reduction to one-third of the present level of 6 billion people.
2. There is a campaign, in part supported by Markl, to push for relentless use of the full arsenal of the technologies of reproductive medicine. Most of you are familiar with it, so I can be very brief:
In vitro fertilization: You can fertilize human ova outside the body, which means, if you have donors of human egg cells and sperm, you can "produce" human embryos. In Germany, IVF is allowed only for the purpose of implanting the embryo in the womb of the woman whose ovum was fertilized in this way. But there are always more ova fertilized than are needed. And now the latest fad in biomedical research is to get your hands on these "superfluous" embryos and turn them into stem-cell cultures, for the pupose of growing transplant tissues. Lucrative patents are in store for those who come first.
Cloning: Everybody knows about the cloned sheep "Dolly." There are various techniques to put the nucleus of a normal body cell into a female ovum, thus producing a cloned embryo with the same gene code as the person whose body cell was denuclearized for this purpose. Only very recently, the U.S. House of Representatives has forbidden any human cloning, also "therapeutic cloning" only for the purpose of growing tissues or organs for the person who gave the nucleus for the clone. In Germany, all human cloning has been forbidden, by a quite strict law, since 1990. But for example in Great Britain, therapeutic cloning is explicitly allowed.
Pre-Implantation Diagnosis: PID has nothing to do with an examination for later medical treatment of some sort. PID is a genetic check of the several-days-old embryo still in vitro, in order to decide which embryos not to implant, but to throw away or to use otherwise. PID is applied, when the embryo has only eight cells. One of these eight cells is ripped off and its DNA is checked—obviously quite a heavy-handed intervention.
That is just to give you an idea about that second aspect of the attack on man.
3. There is third aspect of the "Darwinian attack against man," the "Man is an Ape" campaign: One example from the London Times: "Man versus Ape. Could Apes Ever Rule Over Man... ? We Are More Like Our Hairy Cousins Than We Dare To Admit."
Even more "hairy" is actually an article in Die Welt on a book entitled Bruder Affe (Brother Ape). It says: "Men and Apes. Richard Wrangham and Dale Peterson looked for differences and found none.... Indeed, the differences between our hairy brothers are not of a fundamental, but only matter of gradation."
It's psywar, of course: "Don't you dare talk about man in the image of God, or man as a 'purpose in and for itself'! Man has come from Apes, and still is one. Don't you dare interfere with our Ape Science, such as for example human cloning." This is indeed the gist of a declaration in favor of human cloning, signed, among other Darwinists, by British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, who also advocates human rights for Great Apes. I found it on the Internet, and it insists: "Homo sapiens is a member of the animal kingdom"!
The "genetic" psywar version has its clone in the "artificial intelligence" psywar version coming from the group of Marvin Minsky, Hans Moravec, or Max More, who claim: In principle, the human mind functions like a computer, and can be simulated and eventually replaced by a powerful machine. And with an expression of contempt on their faces, the AI gurus preach, what a deficient and miserably flawed computer man is.
So, we have a two-pronged ideological attack aimed against the same thing: human identity!
The Common Roots
What does all this have to do with each other: Markl's wish to shrink the world population, the bioindustry's lust for human embryos as raw material for the "biotechnological revolution," and the Man is Ape and/or a bad computer campaign?
Very simple. All three aspects lead directly to the doorsteps of that camp of Darwinists, utilitarian sociobiologists, or misnamed "humanists" today, who are faithfully following the detailed outline—in fact a comprehensive plan of action—left behind by their mentors: Arch-Darwinist Thomas Huxley; intelligence man and science fiction writer H.G. Wells; Bertrand Russell; and Thomas Huxley's grandsons Aldous and Julian Huxley.
I will focus on Aldous and Julian Huxley. Aldous is the novelist mostly known as author of Brave New World, while Julian became general secretary (1946) and director (1948) of UNESCO, the UN Economic, Social and Cultural Organization.
Lyndon LaRouche, in a recent memo, distinguished between "mere actors on a stage" and the "stage master" behind the scene, who shapes the things to come. Such stage masters, evil ones, were Aldous and Julian Huxley.
Aldous Huxley's Malthusian 'Brave New World'
Brave New World was written in 1931. But after the Soviets had sent their Sputnik satellite into space, Russell, the Huxleys, and their collaborators went into a new wave of stage-master activities. Being fully aware of the creative nature of the human mind, they started another huge program to quell that potential, because they perceived it as a fatal threat to the oligarchy they represented. In 1959, Aldous Huxley published Brave New World Revisited:
"A new age is supposed to have begun on October 4, 1957 [when Sputnik was launched]. But actually, in the present context, all our exuberant post-Sputnik talk is irrelevant and even nonsensical. So far as the masses of mankind are concerned, the coming time will not be the Space Age; it will be the Age of Overpopulation."
Neither a "colony on the Moon" nor a future "emigration to Mars" would contribute in the least to solve the overpopulation problem on Earth, Huxley writes. He reminds his readers, how the demographic problem had been solved by the oligarchy in Brave New World:
"An optimum figure for world population had been calculated and numbers were maintained at this figure (a little under 2 billions, if I remember rightly) generation after generation."
It seems, we have discovered one source of Mr. Markl's demographic wisdom.
The first chapter of Brave New World Revisited, from which we quoted here, is headlined "Overpopulation." The second chapter is on eugenics as an antidote to what Aldous Huxley calls "dysgenics," the qualitative decline of the human genetic makeup:
"In this second half of the 20th Century we do nothing systematic about our breeding; but in our random and unregulated way we are not only overpopulating our planet, we are also, it would seem, making sure, that these greater numbers shall be of biologically poorer quality.... Today, thanks to sanitation, modern pharmacology and the social conscience, most of the children born with hereditary defects reach maturity and multiply their kind."
And he describes, what a terrible mistake it is, in his opinion, to go to some tropical island and eradicate malaria with DDT, thus saving the lives of some hundreds of thousands, because the offspring of these people would be millions and their lives would be only hunger and misery.
This topic also appears in Julian Huxley's Essays of a Humanist, which already gives you an idea what kind of "humanism" that is. We published years ago what the Malthusian reasoning was behind the campaign against DDT,[2] but it is nevertheless revealing how outspoken Aldous and Julian Huxley are on that point.
Aldous Huxley's stagemasterly activities during the 1960s are described in a book, still available at Böttiger Verlag, about The Case of Charles Manson. Huxley was deeply involved in the research, development, testing, and promotion of hallucinogenic drugs like LSD. In the beginning of the '60s, he made celebrated speeches about the pharmaceutical possibility to establish "a tearless dictatorship" with "painless concentration camps for whole societies," thanks to cheap and widespread drugs like LSD. The effect of drugs like that, he described in The Doors of Perception.
Julian Huxley, the 'Humanist'
Julian, in the meantime, stuck to the Darwinian subject and promoted his "new humanism." All of the following quotes come from the last two essays of his Essays of a Humanist (London: Chatto & Windus, 1964):
"If man is not to become the planet's cancer instead of its partner and guide, the threatening plethora of the unborn must be for ever banished from the scene.
"... Man has become the latest dominant type in the evolutionary process, has multiplied enormously, has achieved miracles of cultural evolution, has reduced or extinguished many other species, and has radically affected the ecology and indeed the whole evolutionary process of our planet. Yet he is a highly imperfect creature. He carries a heavy burden of genetic defects and imperfections. As a psychosocial organism, he has not undergone much improvement.... In addition, his genetic deterioration is being rendered probable by his social setup, and definitely being promoted by atomic fallout."
He adds the threat of population growth, demands a policy of population control both in every country and on the level of the United Nations, and promises:
"I would prophesy that within a quite short time, historically speaking, we shall find ourselves aiming at an absolute reduction of the population in the world in general, and in overcrowded countries like Britain, India and China, Japan, Java and Jamaica in particular; the quantitative control of population is a necessary prerequisite for qualitative improvement, whether psychosocial or genetic."
What does he mean by "genetic qualitative improvement"? we may naïvely ask. Here is the answer:
"At last I reach my specific subject eugenics, with its two aspects, negative and positive. Negative eugenics aims at preventing the spread and especially the increase of defective or undesirable human genes or gene combinations, positive eugenics at securing the reproduction and especially the increase of favourable or desirable ones. Negative eugenics has become increasingly urgent with the increase of mutations due to atomic fallout, and with the increased survival of genetically defective human beings, brought about by advances in medicine, public health, and social welfare. But it must, of course, attempt to reduce the incidence, or the manifestation, of every kind of genetic defect. Such defects include high genetic proneness to diseases such as diabetes, schizophrenia (which affects 1% of the entire human population), other insanities, myopia, mental defect and very low IQ, as well as more clearcut defects like colour-blindness or haemophilia."
None of such people, he says, should ever have children! He advocates voluntary sterilization. Then he adds:
"In addition, the marked differential increase of lower-income groups, classes and communities during the last hundred years cannot possibly be eugenic in its effects."
Does he also want to sterilize the poor? Oh, yes! Julian Huxley writes:
"Here again, voluntary sterilization could be useful. But our best hope, I think, must lie in the perfection of new, simple and acceptable methods of birth control, whether by an oral contraceptive or perhaps preferably by immunological methods involving injections."
If it is possible to order "compulsory or semi-compulsory vaccinations" against a variety of diseases, why not against the procreation of those "unfortunate people whose increase has been actually encouraged by our social system"?
Then he turns against critics, who say, that, in modern times, diseases like TB could be prevented by improving living conditions. No, retorts Huxley, this would not halt the "genetic decline": "It is true that many diseases or defects with a genetic basis, like diabetes or myopia, can be cured by treatment, though almost always with some expense, trouble or discomfort to the defective person as well as to society."
I have to admit, I was shocked by so much shamelessness condensed in a few printed pages. But let us hear what Huxley has to say on "positive eugenics." He proposes underground "sperm-banks—collections of deep-frozen sperm from a representative sample of healthy and intelligent males. A complete answer must wait for the successful deep-freezing of ova also. But this may be achieved in the fairly near future.... Positive eugenics has a far larger scope and importance than negative. It is not concerned merely to prevent genetic deterioration, but aims to raise human capacity and performance to a new level.... The effects of superior germ-plasm can be multiplied ten or a hundredfold through the use of what I call EID, eugenic insemination by deliberately preferred donors, and many thousandfold if the superior sperm is deep-frozen.... When deep-frozen ova too can be successfully engrafted into women, the speed and efficiency of the process could of course be intensified."
Maybe most shocking is, that Julian Huxley calls for an all-out mobilization in this line of research, without any restraints, scruples or precautions: "Various critics insist on the need for far more detailed knowledge of genetics and selection before we can frame a satisfactory eugenic policy or even reach an understanding of evolution. I can only say how grateful I am that neither Galton nor Darwin shared these views, and state my own firm belief that they are not valid. Darwin knew nothing, I repeat nothing, about the actual mechanisms of biological variation and inheritance...."
Before you get sick, I will leave the matter of the Huxleys. But I ask you to think about this explicit and implicit "program of action" which they drew up after the Sputnik shock. Because we have seen it all happening: the rock-drug-sex counterculture of the '60s; the Club of Rome campaign about the "limits to growth"; the first Population Conference in 1974 in Bucharest (where Helga Zepp publicly attacked John D. Rockefeller III for this policy of planned "genocide"); the ensuing, in fact, genocidal campaigns against DDT and nuclear plants; the instrumentalized defense of "endangered species" against human intervention; the UN's Cairo conference of 1994, with the program of action aimed at reduction of the world population; not to forget the neo-liberal mobilization to dismantle the welfare state. And now, the moves toward negative and positive eugenics in the field of reproductive medicine.
Is This Progress?
The question becomes very concrete: Is PID or human cloning "progress," and what about using human embryos for the purpose of turning them into embryonic stem-cell cultures? For many, the answer is not obvious at all, while others, maybe too readily, have an answer at hand. In any case, some serious thinking about the complex matter is strongly recommended.
What I have done so far, is to establish the historical-political context of the issue: The legacy of Aldous and Julian Huxley should be helpful in generally answering the question, whether this line of action is good for mankind, or not. Note that they are explicitly advising against the prevention of diseases, especially infectious diseases in the underdeveloped world! The only diseases which should be eliminated, in their view, are "genetic defects" by way of eugenic selection. So, what they really demand in medicine is clearly not scientific progress, but its opposite, which leads to the obstruction, prevention, and discrediting of real scientific progress.
A symbol of such discrediting is the so-called "science cult" in Canada, led by a former pop singer called "Rael," who employs a group of so-called scientists and talks about cloning Adolf Hitler. Their symbol is a swastika in a Star of David. They believe in UFOs and claim that man was not a product of evolution, but of a genetic intervention of extraterrestrials. Nevertheless, Richard Dawkins wholeheartedly supports the cloning project. It is easy to see how this discredits both medical science and serious extraterrestrial activities like space travel, among other ghastly aspects. And I could hardly believe it, when I saw Rael's "cult bishop," molecular biologist Brigitte Boisselier, sitting side by side with Italian clonist Severino Antinori and American clonist Panayiotis Zavos on Aug. 7, 2001, at a hearing at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington!
It is certainly no coincidence, if reminiscences of H.G. Wells' novel The Island of Dr. Moreau come to mind, because this is the ugliest science fiction come alive! Human Science is being turned into "Ape Science," an expression the real apes will forgive me. By "Ape Science," I mean the type of science parodied in the original movie "Planet of the Apes," starring Charlton Heston—not the recent remake. In the old movie, the Ape Scientists practice, for example, lobotomy—i.e., the surgical removal of large parts of the brain—as a form of "research." In fact, human cloning is no less brutal than lobotomy or "electroshock therapy." The isolated nucleus and the emptied egg cell are merged by electrofusion. Those genetic engineers, who have cloned sheep and mice, say themselves, that cloning produces a totally unknown variety of new types of genetic defects. Each human clone will be a reckless lifelong human experiment.
So, the question regarding human progress has rather to be posed in a different way: How can we save real science from being turned into science fiction of the Wells-Huxley type?
Stem cell research is a case in point: For quite a while "ape scientific" pleas for the use of embryonic stem cells has created an impression among the German public, as if this were the only way to achieve medical advances like cultivating patient-specific transplant tissues. It took a major effort by real scientists to explain the existence and potential of adult stem cells existing in every human body, which can be used with greater chance for success than embryonic stem cells for the same therapeutic purposes.
A recent one-page article by stem-cell expert Gerd Kempermann contributed very competently to this discussion.[3] Kempermann heads a working group on "neuronal stem cells" at the Max Delbrück Institute in Berlin. He established, with mice experiments, that damaged brain tissue can be induced to repair itself, if you stimulate the relevant area. So, Kempermann demands more competence in the debate. People should know what they are talking about, if they talk about stem cells. This admonition is not only meant for opponents of embryonic stem-cell research, but rather for those who blindly fall for any claim or demand in the name of "science." He strongly argues in favor of more serious and more adequately funded research into adult stem cells, and reports numerous fascinating findings. It turns out, that there are adult stem cells that are "more than multipotent," which means you can grow from stem cells of one tissue, cells of other tissues—for example, lung cells from stem cells taken from bone marrow. Kempermann concludes his extraordinarily interesting report with the statement that German stem-cell research is not damaged, in terms of legal restrictions, by the Embryonenschutzgesetz (law to protect embryos), but rather by the federal budget law, which leads to lack of public funding for such science projects as the ones he had described!
So much at this point on the voices of real science, which we have to be able to hear, to amplify, and to augment.
Let us now take our deliberation on what is progress and what not, a crucial step further.
The Demographic Crisis
Physical economist Lyndon LaRouche has developed a very reliable, unambiguous criterion for human progress, which is the increase of potential relative population density per square kilometer and per capita.
On the other hand, we heard already, what Aldous and Julian Huxley, the Malthusians, had to say about demography: They advocated population reduction, and this became and still is the policy of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), from the first UN Population Conference in Bucharest in 1974, through its followup event in Cairo in 1994: absolute population reduction.
That UN policy is, in fact, identical in method and intent to the policy recommended by Erhard Wetzel, the Nazi Rassendezernent [administrative official in charge of racial matters—ed.] who worked in the Nazi Ministry for the eastern occupied territories (the Ostministerium). Wetzel's proposed "negative population policy" for population control and population reduction in Nazi-occupied Russia consisted in a massive propaganda campaign about how dangerous and costly it is to have babies, the distribution of contraceptives, and massive legal abortions. The text is astonishing.[4]
The Cairo program of action proclaimed the "low variant" of the UN world population prognosis as a goal: to reduce the Total Fertility Rate (TFR, average number of children per woman) below 2. The replacement level is 2.1; at any TFR below that, the population shrinks, especially if life expectancy is falling at the same time. UNFPA's own 1992 graph shows where this policy will eventually lead (Figure 1). The climax of population growth is reached by 2050, with less than 8 billion people. A hundred years later, the "Markl Huxley Optimum" of 2 billion is reached.
A French demographer calculated already in 1988 what would happen, if the TFR were to fall in the industrial and developing nations to 1.4 children, as it was in Germany at that time (now it is 1.3): a population implosion (Figure 2).
And guess what happened! The world's fertility rate has actually been sinking since 1965. It sank first in the industrial nations, thus feeding racist propaganda about the "population exlosion" in the underdeveloped countries.
In the meantime, the TFR has fallen below 1.5 children in 23 countries (including Russia and Germany), below 1.8 children in an additional 21 countries (in Eastern and Western Europe, but also developing countries like Barbados) and below 2.1 children in 51 countries, in total (including the U.S.A. and China) (Figure 3).
Just now, in the August issue of Nature, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) has published an article with the title "The End of World Population Growth." It is cloaked in probabilistic language, but the gist is this: According to the median of all their projections, world population would peak in 2070 at about 9 billion and go down from there. The significance of it is only, that they have to admit that the "population explosion" is over. That's all, because everything else in their projections is a lie—the figures, the calculations.
For example: IIASA says in Nature: "We assume that life expectancy at birth will rise in all regions, except in Sub-Saharan Africa, where HIV/AIDS will lower life expectancies during the early part of the century." The reality: Already in the interval 1998-2000, average life expectancy has shrunk for the first time since such statistics have been kept! Only in 30 countries has it increased. And the worst of the economic collapse is still to come.
So, it is absolutely unclear when the world population will start to shrink in absolute terms: in 2070, in 2050, in ten years from now, or if it has in reality started to shrink already. The population decline is on, in the 51 countries listed above. The trend is population decline, the surest symptom of humanity standing at the abyss of a new dark age. The demographic crisis is in many respects the clearest illustration of the non-cyclical, much more fundamental crisis that mankind is facing.
Thus it should be more obvious now, that the three aspects of the "neo-Darwinian attack on man" can be understood and dealt with only in one package. In other words, if someone wants to defend the right to life of embryos, but blocks on the population collapse, he or she will fail as much as someone who wants to defend real science, but blocks on Malthusianism and the Huxleyite project to pervert science. If right-to-lifers dumbly block the noble imperative of science to change the biosphere for the sake of the common good of mankind and to extend the human domain into the universe; and if utilitarian "scientists" more and more lose the ability to distingish between science and science fiction of the Huxley-Wellsian sort, deeming it particularly enlightened and future-oriented to spit on the idea of man in the image of God, while both parties remain indifferent to the global demographic disaster, the debate will lead nowhere. Worse, it will be more and more polarized, and more and more irrational, exactly as Wells and the Huxleys would like it to happen.
Therefore, we have to switch on some faculties of reason in our own and other people's minds, and set out to conquer those elements of the problem, which we have, for one reason or the other, neglected so far.
The population issue is of special relevance here, for yet another reason: The fact that IIASA and others now are forced to admit the demographic decline has most far-reaching implications. Its crucial significance is, that all those Huxleyite programs based on the argument of the threat of overpopulation of the planet are obsolete! The key premise of that whole range of evil policies is as obsolete as the New Economy bubble! On the Internet, some people call this a "culture shock," this shift from the threat of population explosion, to the threat of population decline.
In other words, it is time for a paradigm shift, not only in economic policies—we know how the demographic decline could be reversed: What we need is "a generation of development," and LaRouche stands for exactly that alternative—but a paradigm shift, also in terms of the image of man.
The Image of Man
This is the context of the Kulturkampf, as the president of the German Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Prof. Wolfgang Frühwald, has called the quite vivid debate in the German public about the neo-Darwinian image of man, which Hubert Markl promoted in his speech on June 22 at the annual meeting of the Max Planck Society, as opposed to that truly humanist image of man, without which there would not have been a European civilization.
This image of man has to be intelligible for non-religious people, and it cannot just be Kantian. The philosophical "Maginot line" of those who rightfully argue against degrading human embryos to the status of raw material for the bioindustry, is pretty much Kant's notion that "man is purpose in himself." This is true, and it goes well together with the principle of "human dignity" in the German Grundgesetz [Constitution—ed.], but it has become ever foggier and less clear (for reasons for which Kant himself is in part responsible). And utilitarians can easily argue that Kant didn't know anything about embryos, etc. Therefore people like Professor Frühwald have called for a notion encompassing the "the whole scope of man." Humanist experts in constitutional law have called for an expanded notion of "human dignity," which protects not only the integrity and dignity of the human person, but also the integrity and dignity of the human species, of mankind.
Combining the approach of "life scientist" Vladimir Vernadsky, with the theory of manifolds developed by the mathematician Georg Cantor, we come to a manifold called man, which takes the form of a well-ordered series, which, in turn, has three sub-series.
The series starts with the first cell of the new human being, the fertilized ovum. That starting point is not a theological concept, it is a biological fact (since IVF a very empirical fact), and any other starting point would be as unreasonable as starting the natural number series with 7 instead of 1. The first cell divides into 2, 4, 8 cells, etc.; after 79 days it implants in the uterine wall, the organs develop, the heart and the central nervous system; the fetus is moving like a baby, is growing, and then comes the big event: birth! Only now does the baby have its own body and blood circulation.
Now the next, extra-uterine phase of human development starts, and it starts immediately, with a lot of work: breathing, drinking, shitting.... At the same time the duel nature of man comes into play. The baby's mind is immediately part of this mental milieu which is called "culture." The child grows up, goes to school through puberty, and hopefully reaches, as a young adult, mental maturity, that is, the ability to think independently.
This marks the beginning of a third phase of development, which is almost totally located in the realm of mind, if you focus on the essential aspects, the inner development of character and mind. There are the great challenges as a mature parent, in whatever useful profession, or as a responsible citizen. This is the realm of possible improvements in the specifically human ability to generate, transmit, and apply ideas. As LaRouche has emphasized in his papers on education, there is a total analogy between the reliving of already-existing ideas, which other people discovered before, and the creation of totally new ideas. This realm is Vernadsky's "noösphere."
In this way, we can get the full scope of man in his many stages of potential development, unified into one idea: Man. It is a living process of becoming, defined by its highest potential.
Furthermore, this potential is not limited to the single mortal individual, but the individual is linked to humanity as a whole—past, present, and future—not only through "culture," but through the specific individual quality of the human mind. Building on the discoveries of creative people in the past, adding new discoveries to them, man can develop an ever truer mirror-image of the universe in his mind, without ever reaching truth itself. But it is enough to make the inhabitant of the noösphere master over the biosphere and non-living processes.
This is the difference between man and animal that "ape scientists" can't find. Cantor calls this the "transfinite" quality of the human mind; Nicolaus of Cusa and others call it being "in the image of God." But it doesn't matter what you call it: It is an idea without which you cannot really enjoy your being human. And therefore, nobody should be deprived of it.
Here is the source of human freedom and dignity, both of the indiviudal and humanity as a whole. This potential is what makes mankind the most precious thing on Earth, what enables man to find cures for old and new diseases in medicine, to remedy the present economic disaster, and to expand human activity to other planets and beyond.
From the well-ordered manifold of unfolding human potential, you can also derive crucial principles of natural law, criteria for what is good or bad in relevant human relations—in education for example, or in the economic organization of society, or what is to be considered progress or not.
Ape Science
All human science proceeds from this concept. Only Ape Science tries to destroy it.
I want to conclude with a true piece of Ape Science: Richard Dawkins published an article on "The Evolutionary Future of Man: A Biological View of Progress," in the London Economist, on Nov. 9, 1993. First he tries to explain, in a Darwinian way, why the brain and skull of Homo sapiens is bigger than that of his predecessors millions of years ago: "At some point in the evolution of brains they acquired the ability to simulate models of the outside world. In its advanced forms we call this ability 'imagination.' It may be compared to the virtual reality software that runs on some computers."
This "internal virtual world," he surprisingly claims, becomes so much part of the environment of the brain "hardware," that the hardware actually changes. "The changes in hardware then stimulate improvements in the virtual environment, and the spiral continues. This progressive spiral is likely to advance even faster, if the virtual environment is put together as a shared enterprise involving many individuals. And it is likely to reach breakneck speeds if it can accumulate progressively over generations."
At this point, it is quite clear to an insightful reader that Dawkins is looking for some horror image. And indeed, here it comes: an animated film using a computer program called "Morph." It is a film about skulls. The first skull is from Australopithecus "Lucy" about 3 million years ago. The second is Homo erectus 1.5 million years ago. The third is Homo sapiens today. From these three given skull data, the "Morph" program computes a series of mathematical intermediates and a trend toward Homo futuris, 3 million years hence.
"It is broadly true, that any trends you find before H. erectus continue after him." says Dawkins. "The film shows this much more dramatically ... the spectacular ballooning of the brain...."
The extrapolation into the future 3 million years hence "shows a continuation of the trend to inflate the balloon of the braincase; the chin continues to move forward and sharpen into a silly little goatee point, while the jaw itself looks too small to chew anything but baby pap. Indeed the whole cranium is quite reminiscent of a baby's skull."
It is really apish! He would "put very little money" on the likelihood or unlikelihood, "that something like this large-brained H. futuris will involve," Dawkins admits. So, why does he develop this nonsensical movie? Does he want to show how absurd evolutionary biology can get? Or does he take pleasure in imaging mankind as just an ephemeral episode in an entropic universe, comparable to the ballooning of a speculative bubble in the entropic financial markets of the 1990s?
I'll leave you with that, and give the floor to Torbjörn Jerlerup, who will speak on "Peter Singer and the Darwinian Left."
[1] Interview in Frankfurter Rundschau, Jan. 9, 2001. See also Gabriele Liebig, "Dr. Markl's Great Bioethical Offensive vs. Human Dignity," EIR, July 27, 2001.
[2] See, for example, "Population Control Lobby Banned DDT To Kill More People," EIR, June 19, 1992.
[3] Gerd Kempermann, "Der Traum neuer Zellen für neue Menschen," Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Aug. 17, 2001.
[4] Erhard Wetzel, "Stellungnahme und Gedanken zum Generalplan Ost des Reichsfuehrers SS," Geheime Reichssache, Dokument Nr. 2 (Allied Document NG-2325), in Helmut Heiber, "Der Generalplan Ost," Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte, Heft 3/1958, S. 317f.
