Eugenics In The Light Of Evolutionary Theory

Through an examination of the history of Eugenics, this thesis seeks to uncover the relationship among eugenics, evolutionary theory and genetics by means of an interpretation of Darwinian theory of evolution. It also offer a summary and discussion on post-war reflection about eugenics and the international eugenic movement. With these as its basis, the thesis features a speculation on the eugenic idea in the light of evolutionary view, which is absent in the thinking of the pioneers of the field.The idea of artificial human breeding originated from Plato in ancient Greek. With the birth of evolutionary theory as background, Sir Francis·Galton carried out a scientific and systematic research on long-term human eugenics, which was followed by Muller's effort to make perfect the eugenic ideas based on genetics. The eugenic theory, which aims at improving the quality of human species, received wide-spread attention as soon as it was proposed. In the meantime, its misintepretation and misuse by the Facists and Racists led to the outrageous holocaust during the second world war.The post-war moral reflection on eugenics focused mainly on motivation, consequence, theory, social application and practitioners (either governments or individuals) of the movement. Taking this into account, this thesis carried out a re-reflection based on Darwinian theory of evolution and an analysis of eugenics and its movement in the framework of natural selection theory.Eugenics was apparently triggered by a motivation of goodness. However, it has cast shadow that is hard to be eliminated. Even if government intervention is eliminated and intervention is carried out solely by individuals, human being will still be caught in a dilemma when viewed in the framework of natural selection.