Toward a scientific habit of mind: Aute Richards and ecology as the new eugenics

Background/Question/Methods: The fall of Nazi Germany had widespread repercussions in Western society, among them the de-legitimization of the Progressive-era proposition that humanity could and should direct the future of human evolution by encouraging reproduction in certain segments of the population while simultaneously discouraging reproduction in others. “Better Baby” contests and forced sterilization of the “unfit” represented the opposite ends of this project. Eugenics thereafter became the bogeyman of twentieth-century thought, reviled by all and consigned to the dustbin of history. Or was it? Only recently have historians of science begun to chart how notions about population, race, and environment formed a complex web of meaning during from 1910-1945. Using published academic papers and personal manuscripts, it is possible to extend this discussion into the post-1945 era and see how eugenic arguments persisted in one individual who was well-prepared to think in ecological terms. Aute Richards was a member of the ESA, Director of the Oklahoma Biological Survey, executive committee member of the Oklahoma Academy of Science, and a professor of zoology at the University of Oklahoma from 1920-1960. Tracing his narrative can help answer questions about the role of ecological scientists (and academics) in re-validating (and reconceptualizing) historically "distasteful" movements.  

Results/Conclusions: This paper adds to and refines our understanding of the relationships between ecological, environmental, and eugenic thought in the United States from 1945-1960. It suggests that vocabularies of ecology were utilized to avoid the easy, often racist biological determinism of early eugenicists and breathe new life into some of its arguments and ideas. Not all eugenicists were bigots, and not all eugenic ideas necessarily discriminated. Richards, using the language of ecology and conservation (e.g., population, carrying capacity, and overconsumption), expressed his concern about the current and future state of the world. Before Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) and Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb (1968), Richards worried that humanity was living at an unsustainable level. The biological and ecological scientist, he argued in academic papers and public talks, had a duty to society to employ his or her specialized knowledge to improve the world. In doing so Richards helped to construct new eugenic arguments that, in creative and subtle ways, melded the measured, technocratic and optimistic pragmatism of anti-eugenicists like John Dewey and the urgent, Malthusian concerns of ardent eugenicists like Aldo Leopold and Madison Grant. This new vocabulary aided in the transformation and re-legitimization of ontologies of hereditary worth.