Nassim Taleb

Factual · Philosophy, ethics and society

“This naturally leads to notions of eugenics: we humans can improve the human race by speeding evolution.”

Nassim Taleb, essay author · November 2021 · On Christianity (foreword for Tom Holland's Dominion) (Medium/Incerto)

Darwinian ideas of evolutionary differences within species naturally lead to notions of eugenics, that humans can improve the race by speeding evolution.

Mostly true True in substance, wrong in a detail.

What would count as true or false

Judged as of 2021-11. True: historians of science agree that eugenics (Galton et al.) drew on Darwinian ideas of variation within species and aimed to improve humans through selective breeding, i.e. to speed or steer evolution. Mostly true: the link is historically real, but 'naturally leads' overstates how inevitable it was, or the framing contains a minor inaccuracy. Mixed: historians are divided on how far Darwinism led to eugenics. Mostly false: eugenics owed its main origins to other sources and Darwin's role is overstated. False: there is no historical link between Darwinian thought and eugenics.

Evidence

1. Francis Galton and the Early Days of Eugenics Springer (book chapter page) · 10 November 2024

   “The origins of eugenics lie in Darwinism. Francis Galton wanted humans to direct their own evolution through increased artificial selection.”

2. Oxford DNB article: Galton Oxford University Press (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography), by Ruth Schwartz Cowan · 1 January 2004

   “Galton believed selective breeding (the cultural equivalent of Darwin's natural selection) to be the only hope for improving the human race, precisely because heredity was a more important determinant than environment.”

3. How the history of genetics charts the rise and fall of eugenics The British Academy (blog, by Peter J. Bowler) · 1 August 2019

   “Darwin and Galton focused on features that show a continuous range of variation within the population, such as height and intelligence, and argued that the distribution could be changed by selecting which individuals were allowed to breed.”

4. Darwin, social Darwinism and eugenics (Chapter 9) - The Cambridge Companion to Darwin Cambridge University Press · 4 March 2009

   “Few professional historians believe either that Darwin's theory leads directly to these doctrines or that they are entirely unrelated. But both the nature and significance of the link are passionately disputed.”

Reasoning

E1, E2 and E3 show that historians of science trace eugenics to Darwinian ideas. Galton wanted humans to steer their own evolution by selective breeding, which E2 calls the cultural equivalent of natural selection, and E3 notes that Darwin and Galton both focused on variation within populations. However, E4 says few professional historians think Darwin's theory leads directly to eugenics, and that the nature and significance of the link are disputed. That makes "naturally leads" an overstatement, even though the historical connection is real.

Cite this claim

Nassim Taleb, “Darwinian ideas of evolutionary differences within species naturally lead to notions of eugenics, that humans can improve the race by speeding evolution.” (said November 2021). Verdict: mostly true. Reliability API, claim c_42e2feedc8d5, method 0.1.0+28da144b. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_42e2feedc8d5