Cancelled by his college
thecritic.co.uk
thecritic.co.uk
> (6) Fisher, in a testimonial for von Verschuer after the war, supported von Verschuer’s “wish to benefit the German racial stock, especially by the elimination of manifest defectives, such as those deficient mentally”.
You can say "we should judge people by the standards of their time", but it seems that he fell short even by those standards.
The commemoration was for mathematical contributions, not humanitarian efforts.
Another thing society needs to curb is getting celebs to comment on everything, so attention in one area doesn’t make one into an all-knowing life coach as it seems to work for some people.
But more broadly, if you are worried that giving someone’s attention will create a large following of, for instance eugenicists, then you are actually worried about the idea already having a large support, irrespective of the person who would receive an unrelated award.
There are good arguments to be made against eugenics programs, just make them instead of trying to disappear anyone that has ever seemed to support them.
Refusing to recognise someone’s brilliance because of political ideologies is something most people understand to be wrong and in my view just as likely, if not more, to create support for that political cause than to suppress it.
Just out of curiosity, what are notable examples of people saying “we should judge people by the standards of their time” in a reasonable way?
I most frequently hear it used for many of the “American forefathers” or other prominent people during that time to refer to their views on slavery and the treatment of indigenous people. In that case it’s clearly laughable, since A) there were prominent contemporary critics and B) a lot of those people spent considerable effort performing mental gymnastics in writing to defend these things, which one wouldn’t expect if they were simply unaware of any potential moral problems with their actions and views.
You are most probably not among the universally righteous minds of our times, you are just an average man of our time. I don't think that means, by default, that all your actions are not worthy of praise of that your failing by an undisclosed future moral crime (such as eating sentient animals) negate all your moral choices today.
Do you consider eating meat at a restaurant to be a morally acceptable thing to do?
The meat you consume there is likely factory grown, which means that the animal lived in total misery until it was brutally murdered under extreme duress.
It's highly likely that people will consider treating animals like that to be immoral at some point. If you don't accept your quote as truth you'll also have to accept that your descends will consider you (and everyone else in our society) monstrous.
Personally, I'd say yes. I know enough to try to diminish my animal consumption, but for a variety of reasons I haven't eliminated it. If that is someday seen as monstrous enough that they want to revoke my awards and recognition, I'm actually all for it. It will be a better, kinder world than the one I live in.
E.g., reading (non-politics) authors from the past. Listening to music by musicians from the past. Just as a quick example, should you or should you not listen to Wagner is a question among Jews, because of his anti-semitic views. Personally I wouldn't let that stop me from listening to him, but people have different views on this kind of stuff.
Today this sounds as condoning revenge or vigilantism, as opposed to forgiveness.
But in its historical context, it was in fact the opposite, since the norm at the time used to be to engage in vastly unequal retaliation (e.g. "your entire family for an eye").
Also, mr Sharpton is known for his past history of bigotry and the great majority of people pretend he never uttered bigoted words is not only on TV but is celebrated as a civil rights leader.
If you are going to quote the article, maybe read it first. The author is quite clear that he believes this to be a misunderstanding given other writings by Fisher.
> (6) Fisher, in a testimonial for von Verschuer after the war, supported von Verschuer’s “wish to benefit the German racial stock, especially by the elimination of manifest defectives, such as those deficient mentally”. The wording is unfortunately brief, but Fisher the professor of genetics is referring to the future “stock” and the ultimate elimination from the population of the genes that cause the defect, as is clear from his earlier writing on the subject. To eliminate the defectives themselves would constitute murder.
Context is important. Cherry picking specific sections to make a point contrary to what is actually being said has a name, but it escapes me.
Genes aren't "deficient mentally" and it's hard to read that quote any other way than as advocating eugenics.
Reading the extended text makes me wonder about the whole story, but doesn't really convince me Fisher wasn't in favor of eugenics and all that entails. I wouldn't say I'm skeptical, but it would take more than that.
Seems unfair to judge people of the past in such a way?
edit: I see this idea has already been discussed below _- I should have done a search for "meat" before commenting.
There are many people throughout history that are known and studied without being celebrated.
Statues, windows, etc. are there to commemorate and celebrate people. If we decide that we shouldn't celebrate an individual (confederate generals for example), removing that statue is not the same as erasing them from history.
That's precisely what's at issue. Who decides who should be celebrated and who should not? What are the criteria for deciding? And what story are we telling about our history with those decisions.
in this case, the leadership at Caius College. in every other case, the same sort of people who made the decision to celebrate the individual in the first place.
in a broader sense, history does - the same people who rail against taking down statues seem to like talking about how history will view the leaders of today. "cancelling" historical figures is the literal implementation of "history will judge my actions". history has judged this guy, and decided that eugenics aren't cool.
This view of not celebrating humans in art for their inherent sinfulness is actually very well known in history. The reason for islams intricate ornaments in buildings is the ban on depicting humans. The christian church has also been split on the matter. Could we be a wee bit more civilized in the 21st century and celebrate the whole person, warts and all? A human? “The man greatly contributed to the field of statistics but was also involved in eugenics” both should be known, researched, debated and understood. For neither would have been possible without the other.
But now the college Fisher loved has turned its back on him. It has removed from the Hall a stained-glass window commemorating him, one of a set of six installed to celebrate him, Crick, Venn, Chadwick and two other distinguished college figures, Sir Charles Sherrington and George Green. It has done so because of accusations that Fisher was a proponent of eugenics.
It's almost the reductio ad absurdum version of culture war bullshit.
Let's not forget that eugenics was not an exclusively right-wing position. Many socialists were pro-eugenics: the Webbs, Shaw, C.P. Snow, Haldane, and many more. Eugenics was widely supported by many academics of all political stripes in the early 20th Century.
Also its very much as alive right now - we abort the vast majority of fetuses with known birth defects, we just don't want to call it that. Doesn't matter your view of abortion but its difficult to argue against it.
I have no idea what Fisher's wider politics were, but I have a pretty good idea of what the politics of the publication are.
Having a window removed because of misrepresentations made with religious zeal by a social movement is a huge deal. That should be enough to reverse the decision and sanction everyone involved in putting forward the lies.
Dating & Mating is eugenics at a conscious & subconscious level.
By the same logic, there is nothing wrong with censorship, because individuals also decide to not say certain things or not pay attention to certain things.
You can see this effect in a short scale too. J. K. Rowling was once considered a feminist and role figure for an accomplished woman, until her views on trans people made her no longer reflect the progressive opinions of today.
I think this is part of the normal progression of modern society, accelerated by the ability to reach out to countless people across the world.
It's interesting and perhaps a little scary to theorise what taboos will change from "disgusting" to "progressive" in the future. There's a good chance most people, even the progressive ones, will fall behind on the curve of acceptance at some point.
I myself believe that eugenics, if applied well, can help humanity. In practice, though, I don't think humanity can be trusted to apply it well, so any attempt to introduce it is doomed to be plagued by humanity's flaws. It's the same reason communism fails: humanity cannot work together enough to make something work that in theory would be beneficial to all of us.
Is bemoaning the fertility of some disfavoured social or religious group eugenicist? If it is then a hell of a lot of people are eugenicist, and definitely not confined to the right.
If we’re comparing it to statues what do they teach? What do they symbolize?
Are we required to keep them forever?
Under what circumstances is it acceptable to change, replace or remove them?
What are we remembering by keeping them? I don’t think that anyone argues that we should be _erecting_ statues to figures we don’t admire - who, if they’re intended as cautionary tales are surely _more_ worthwhile to think about. So it’s not just that they serve to help us remember figures from the past.
So should we instead keep them to remember that the people _were_ once admired enough to get statues? That seems like a very odd second-order reason to keep something.
It seems to me to be perfectly reasonable for an organisation to decide that they no-longer want to celebrate someone.
Quotes in this comment come from
Bodmer, W., Bailey, R.A., Charlesworth, B. et al. The outstanding scientist, R.A. Fisher: his views on eugenics and race. Heredity 126, 565–576 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41437-020-00394-6
With full text available at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41437-020-00394-6
I highly recommend you read this paper if you're interested in a deep exploration of these topics.
I've also paraphrased a few things here, but, go easy on me. This is a HN comment, ya know, not an academic paper. It's not my intention to plagiarize anyone here. :)
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FISHER THE EUGENICIST
Fisher absolutely was a eugenicist, but not in the way in which that word is typically colored by its association with the Nazis. His concept of eugenics was more along the lines of a set of methods by which a population could improve itself via controlled or regulated breeding.
This concept, as espoused by Fisher, was certainly extremely classist, as he regarded people of high intelligence and leadership ability, whom he referred to as the "higher classes" as inherently more valuable than others, among which would fall people such as tradesmen and unskilled laborers ("lower classes"). And, he did support the Eugenics Society's position in favor of voluntary sterilization of "feebleminded" individuals as part of a way to realize his eugenic vision, and this was the view espoused in the 1934 Brock Report.
FISHER AS RACIST
The closest he ever comes to advocating any kind of racist idea is when he suggests in his comments on the 1952 UNESCO statement on "The Race Concept" that:
> '...available scientific knowledge provides a firm basis for believing that the groups of mankind differ in their innate capacity for intellectual and emotional development,' seeing that such groups do differ undoubtedly in a very large number of their genes.
It's not clear whether he intends the word "groups" to mean "races" in any sense in which we would think of it today. In any case, he does not go so far as to suggest that some "groups" may be generally superior to others. And, remember, he holds out eugenics as a way in which any population may "improve" itself, such as by increasing the overall intelligence level of the population by preventing people of lower intelligence from being born. This is the context in which we should take "his support for von Verschuer’s 'elimination of mental defectives to benefit the German racial stock,'" as noted in the posted article. (I'll return to von Verschuer in a moment.)
He does, however, write in private correspondence:
> I am sorry that there should be propaganda in favour of miscegenation in North America as I am sure it can do nothing but harm. Is it beyond human endeavour to give and justly administer equal rights to all citizens without fooling ourselves that these are equivalent items?
Given the man was born in 1890, I think we can forgive him this belief, which was extremely common right up until the day he died in 1962.
ASSOCIATION WITH VON VERSCHUER
Now, as regarding von Verschuer and his association with Mengele, there is no evidence Fisher even knew of this association, or that von Verschuer approved in any way of Hitler's genocide against the Jewish people. Indeed:
> Richard Goldschmidt, who had been forced to leave his position in Germany because he was Jewish, supported Verschuer as “a fine and sympathetic person” and “an exceptional scholar in his field and one of the most knowledgeable medical geneticists.”
In fact, available evidence indicates that Fisher's relationship with von Verschuer was purely scientific, without any racist ideology whatsoever.
SUMMARY / CONCLUSION
So, in summary, looking at the 6 allegations mentioned in the article (paraphrased):
(1) Fisher was a racist:
True, but not in his professional work, and not apparently more so than most people were ~100 years ago.
(2) He believed in forced sterilization:
Patently false. He never advocated forced sterilization, only voluntary sterilization.
(3) He was a co-author of the Brock Report of 1934 calling for the legalization of compulsory sterilization:
The Brock Report, as a publication of the Eugenics Society, did not advocate compulsory sterilization, only voluntary sterilization.
(4) He took a favorable view of Nazi eugenics:
There is absolutely no evidence of this, and, in fact a good amount of evidence that he would not have been in favor of Nazi eugenics in any way whatsoever.
(5) He corresponded with Otmar von Verschuer, a German geneticist and supervisor of Josef Mengele, efore and after the Second World War:
True, but von Verschuer's connection to Mengele was not well known until after the war. And, even then, Fisher's contacts with von Verschuer were on a professional level, devoid of any sort of ideology, much less racist ideology.
(6) He supported von Verschuer’s “elimination of mental defectives to benefit the German racial stock”:
True, but, again, this must be viewed in the context of Fisher's view on eugenics as a whole, and his utter lack of support for forced sterilization.
So, it seems that upon taking a broader view of Fisher's views on eugenics and his professional writings, none of the charges hold up.