Greg Radick, History and Philosophy of Science, University of Leeds, UK
Rutgers New Brunwick Department of History and the Rutgers University Libraries
Time: 1:00 p.m.
Place: Scholarly Communications Center, Teleconference Room, Alexander Library, Rutgers, New Brunswick
Information: James Delbourgo, jdelbourgo@history.rutgers.edu
"Darwin was no less a child of his time than we are of ours." So wrote the Rutgers anthropologist Ashley Montagu, in a remarkable but little remembered 1952 book on Darwin. For Montagu, it was crucial that people stop believing that Darwinian science had shown them to be competitive animals. His book argued that animals are by nature cooperative, and that Darwin's "fundamental error" in this matter was due to his immersion in Victorian imperialism and industrial capitalism. Although Montagu's book was well received, some have seen links between the leftwing stance expressed there and his departure from Rutgers in 1955, when the country--Rutgers included--was in anti-Communist mood. Making use of previously unexamined documents, this talk will reconsider Montagu's interpretation of Darwin's science, explore the wider intellectual and political project that led him to write his book, and show that, if anything, it was his reputation as a defender of the Darwinian "law of the jungle" that made for administrative anxiety at Rutgers.