Document Type
Thesis
Date of Award
Fall 1-31-2000
Degree Name
Master of Science in Professional and Technical Communication - (M.S.)
Department
Humanities and Social Sciences
First Advisor
Robert Edward Lynch
Second Advisor
Burt Kimmelman
Third Advisor
Thomas B. Swanzey
Abstract
Biological determinism is a field of scientific theory that attributes human behavior, relationships, and social structures predominantly to hereditary and biological rather than cultural and environmental influences. In almost twenty-five years of published essays, the Harvard evolutionary biologist, Stephen Jay Gould, has sounded an alarm that biological determinism-through its scientific rationalization of slavery, eugenic sterilization, Nazi atrocity, and more subtle forms of injustice perennially poses a real and dangerous threat to humanity. This thesis explores the career-long anti-hereditarian thread permeating Gould's published works on evolutionary history and the history of science. Gould's assertions regarding the cultural embeddedness of science are emphasized-as well as his view that the human species' role within the "big picture" of geological time and space is often dangerously misinterpreted. His alternative view, biological potentialism, is presented and defended.
Recommended Citation
Ryan, Kevin F., "A thumb on the scale : biological determinism and the essays of Stephen Jay Gould" (2000). Theses. 811.
https://digitalcommons.njit.edu/theses/811
