Julian Huxley

Sir Julian Sorell Huxley, FRS (June 22, 1887 – February 14, 1975) was a British biologist, author, humanist and internationalist, known for his popularisations of science in books and lectures. He was the first director of UNESCO and was knighted in 1958.

Eugenics

Like many biologists in the first half of the twentieth century, Huxley was a proponant of Eugenics as a method of bettering society. Huxley wrote two books critical of genetics in the Soviet Union (which he twice visited), which was dominated by Lysenkoism, a pseudoscientific doctrine which states that acquired characteristics can be inherited. Lysenkoism was dangerous because it stopped the artificial selection of crops on Darwinian principles, which eventually led to famine. Huxley feared a similar process of genetic stagnation would occur in the human population without the aid of eugenics, which the Lysenkoists rejected.

Related Topics:
Eugenics - Soviet Union - Lysenkoism - Artificial selection - Famine

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While Huxley saw eugenics as important for removing undesirable variants from the human gene pool as a whole, he believed that races were equal, and was an outspoken critic of the eugenic extremism that arose in the 1930s. Huxley was a critic of the use of race as a scientific concept, and in response to the rise of fascism in Europe was asked to write We Europeans. The book, on which he collaborated with the ethnologist A. C. Haddon, sociologist Alexander Carr-Saunders and Charles Singer, which amongst other things suggested the word race be replaced with ethnic group. Following the Second World War he was instrumental in producing the UNESCO statement on race, which asserted that race is a cultural concept and not a scientific one. In particular the UNESCO statement helped destroy the idea that Jewish people form a distinct racial group - a key plank in Nazi and other ideologies that led to the Holocaust.

Related Topics:
1930s - Race - Fascism - We Europeans - A. C. Haddon - Alexander Carr-Saunders - Charles Singer - Ethnic group - Second World War - UNESCO - Jewish - Nazi - The Holocaust

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In the post war years, following the horrorific results of the abuse of eugenics, Huxley (1957) coined the term "transhumanism" to describe the view that man should better himself through science and technology, possibly including eugenics, but more importantly the improvement of the social environment.

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