James R. Moore

(Professor of the History of Science at the Open University)

Darwin: antiesclavisme, humanitarisme i teoria de la descendència

dues conferències a Barcelona (15 i 16 de març de 2012)

Darwin’s “sacred cause”

Dijous 15 de març  a les 18 hores

Sala d’Actes de la Delegació del CSIC a Catalunya

(c/ Egipcíaques, 15    08001 Barcelona)

Abstract: Why did Charles Darwin, a rich and impeccably upright gentleman, go out of his way to develop privately a subversive image of human evolution in 1837-39? Why did he pursue the subject with tenacity for three decades before publishing The Descent of Man in 1871? A radical reassessment of the basis of Darwin’s achievement provides the answer. In the standard myth, Darwin was a heroic genius discovering gems of truth beyond the vision of ordinary mortals. He was a great scientist getting on with a scientist’s proper job, not a Victorian naturalist with a consuming moral passion. But today we need to examine the circumstances that made it possible for Darwin to craft a theory from available cultural resources. Underpinning his work on human origins was a belief in racial brotherhood rooted in the greatest moral movement of his age, for the abolition of slavery. For abolitionists, the human races were members of one family, with a common ancestry. Darwin extended the `common descent’ image to the rest of life, making not just the races, but all races kin. Darwin’s science wasn’t the dispassionate practise of textbook caricature; it was driven by human needs and foibles. Even our most vaunted theories may be fostered by humanitarian concern.

Acte organitzat per la Línia d’Investigació «Pràctiques culturals, sabers i patrimoni en espais urbans: música, ciència, medicina» de la IMF-CSIC en el marc dels projectes d’investigació fi nançats per la Direcció General d’Investigació, «Sanitat militar, medicina de guerra i humanitarisme en l’Espanya del segle XIX» (HAR2011-24134) i «Ciència i creença entre dos mons. Evolucionisme, biopolítica i religió a Espanya i Argentina» (HAR2010-21333-C03-03).

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James R. Moore

(Professor of the History of Science at the Open University)

Darwin and the “sin” of slavery

Divendres 16 de  a les 19 hores

Institut d´Estudis Catalans

(Sala Pi i Sunyer – c/Carme, 48, Barcelona)

Abstract: Integral to Darwin’s vision of life’s history was the moral progress that must bring about the abolition of black chattel slavery. Yet the progress he expected could not be easily reconciled with his sense of evolutionary contingency. A man who, in the name of suffering slaves, damned the white man’s ‘arrogance’ in believing himself the ‘godlike’ goal of creation, could not rest comfortably in believing that history must realize his own highest moral goal, black emancipation. In the 1850s, Darwin’s dilemma became increasingly poignant as the conflict over slavery in the United States turned into a holocaust. He could still hope for abolition, but in a dark hour he had to admit, ‘a man cannot hope by intention’. It was only after the emancipation of America’s slaves in the 1860s, when he turned at last to publish on human origins, that Darwin’s optimism revived. In the Descent of Man (1871), ‘the great sin of slavery’ is among the evils to be abolished as ‘the civilised races of man … exterminate and replace’ races that were formerly enslaved. ‘At some future period’, not many centuries hence, Darwin prophesied, ‘virtue will be triumphant’.

Acte organitzat per la Societat Catalana d’Història de la Ciència i de la Tècnica (SCHCT), societat filial de l’Institut d’Estudis Catalans (IEC), amb la col·laboració de la Línia d’Investigació «Pràctiques culturals, sabers i patrimoni en espais urbans: música, ciència, medicina» de la IMF-CSIC