Degeneration, Regeneration and the Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics: The Steinach-Kammerer Collaboration

在19世纪末20世纪初，欧美文化热衷于并经常使用生物世界作为解释社会和心理的隐喻。在用于构建社会结构的生物学概念中，最突出的是退化的概念。退化被认为是导致生命逐渐衰退的基本生理过程，在这个过程中，进化、生长和发育等固有的进步主义过程可以被同样强大和内在的衰退过程逆转。这个概念是从遗传和生理学的角度构思出来的，在生物学史无前例的发展时期统治着社会，到19世纪90年代，退化科学的完全权威已经从生物学延伸到人类。许多人--同性恋者、智障和精神病患者、非欧洲土著文化、酗酒者、穷人和妇女--被认为是堕落的。在同一时期，人们还看到了许多关于再生的科学分析，而退化的生物学则鲜为人知。但很少有社会“再生”：再生的概念很少在社会上得到应用。对社会堕落者的分析与遗传研究联系在一起。社会科学家和政策制定者认为，堕落的个体表现出受损和逐渐恶化的遗传。人们认为，他们受损的遗传可能会污染他们的孩子，甚至整个人类物种。这一假设被广泛地与后天特征遗传的信念联系在一起，这一概念在1880-1930年间在生物学中引起了激烈的争论。然而，在遗传科学中，关于后天习得特征的遗传和退化过程的争论，伴随着关于再生过程的争论。但大多数医生、精神病学家和社会思想家在拯救人类的努力中忽视了再生。1904-1925年在维也纳实验生物学研究所工作的科学家是个例外。拟议的项目将探索导致他们重视再生并将其应用于社会的社会、政治和智力影响。该提案的重点是保罗·卡默勒和尤金·施泰纳赫之间的合作。他们的研究涉及性行为，这是变性概念的传统堡垒。重点将是，与卡默勒的社会主义和共产主义观点相关的民族主义、阶级和种族理论的拒绝，导致了对后天特征的继承所产生的再生的同样强烈的强调。他认为利用继承是一个过程，可以对抗退化的负面影响，并通过再生恢复和改善社会。卡默勒和施泰纳赫对气候和男子气概的研究是对这种恢复的经验性尝试。在科学领域，几乎没有什么问题比先天培养问题在专家和政策制定者之间引起了更多的争论。当代遗传学知识的增长和基因组计划的出版再次将这些问题放在了首位，因为现在有几种方法挑战了克里克中心教条中隐含的基因和表型之间的关系。这个词不再被使用，但正如哲学家伊恩·哈金所指出的那样，退化研究计划仍然存在：“退化的生物污点回来了，不是作为伦勃罗的相貌，而是作为血清素耗竭或遗传标记……唯一的一个方面是……退化计划与早期有显著的不同。它来自基因的威望”(2001，第152页)。生物学在人类重大问题上的应用引发了复杂的科学和伦理问题。解决这些问题的最有见地的方法之一是通过思想家提供的历史视角，他们阐明了社会影响如何改变了过去类似问题的解决方案。

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the cultures of Europe and America eagerly and often used the biological world as a metaphor for explaining the social and psychological. Among the most prominent of the biological concepts used to structure society was the concept of degeneration. Degeneration was believed to be a fundamental physiological process that produced the gradual decay of life, a process by which inherently progressivist processes such as evolution, growth and development, could be reversed by an equally powerful and immanent process of decay. Conceived in terms of heredity and physiology, the concept dominated society during an unprecedented period of growth in biology, and by the1890s, the full authority of the science of degeneration had been extended from biology to people. Many-- homosexuals, the mentally retarded and mentally ill, non-European indigenous cultures, alcoholics, the poor, women-were considered degenerate. The same period also saw much scientific analysis of regeneration, degeneration's less well-known biological opposite. But there were few social 'regenerates': the concept of regeneration rarely saw social application. Analyses of the socially degenerate were linked to the study of heredity. Social scientists and policy makers believed that degenerate individuals displayed damaged and progressively deteriorating heredity. And their damaged heredity, it was thought, could contaminate their children and, indeed, the entire human species. This assumption was widely associated with belief in the inheritance of acquired characteristics, a concept hotly debated in biology from 1880-1930. Within the sciences of heredity, however, debates on the inheritance of acquired characteristics and the process of degeneration were matched by debates on the process of regeneration. But most physicians, psychiatrists and social thinkers ignored regeneration in their efforts to save humankind. The scientists working from 1904-1925 at the Institute for Experimental Biology in Vienna were an exception. The proposed project will explore the social, political and intellectual influences that led to their emphasis on regeneration and its application to society. The proposal focuses on the collaboration between Paul Kammerer and Eugen Steinach. Their research dealt with sexuality, a traditional bastion of the concept of degeneration. The emphasis will be that the rejection of nationalism, class, and race theory associated with Kammerer's socialist and communist views led to an equally strong emphasis on regeneration produced by the inheritance of acquired characteristics. He viewed use inheritance as a process that could counter the negative effects of degeneration and, through regeneration, restore and improve society. Kammerer and Steinach's research on climate and masculinity was an empirical attempt to enact this restoration. Few issues in science have seen more debate among both experts and policy makers than the nature-nurture issue. Growth in contemporary knowledge of genetics and the publication of the genome project have once again placed these issues in the forefront, as several approaches now challenge the relationship between genotype and phenotype implied in Crick's central dogma. The word is no longer used, but, as philosopher Ian Hacking notes, the degeneracy research program is still in evidence: "Biological stigmata of degeneracy are back, not as Lombrosian physiognomy, but as serotonin depletion or genetic markers. . . . Only in one respect is . . . the degeneracy program significantly different from earlier days. It comes from the cachet of genes" (2001, p. 152). Complicated scientific and ethical issues are raised by the application of biology to important human problems. One of the most informative ways to address them is through the historical perspective offered by thinkers who illustrate how social influences have altered the solution of similar problems in the past.