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

在19世纪末和20世纪初，欧洲和美国的文化热切地经常使用生物世界作为解释社会和心理的隐喻。在用来构建社会的生物学概念中，最突出的是退化的概念。退化被认为是一个基本的生理过程，产生了生命的逐渐衰退，一个过程，内在的进步过程，如进化，生长和发展，可以被一个同样强大和不稳定的衰退过程逆转。从遗传学和生理学的角度来构思，这个概念在生物学空前发展的时期主导了社会，到19世纪90年代，退化科学的全部权威已经从生物学扩展到了人类。许多人--同性恋者、智力迟钝者和精神病患者、非欧洲土著文化、酗酒者、穷人、妇女--被认为是堕落的。在同一时期，人们也对再生进行了大量的科学分析，而退化是生物学上不太为人所知的对立面。但是社会上的“再生者”很少：再生的概念很少看到社会应用。对社会堕落者的分析与遗传学的研究有关。社会科学家和政策制定者认为，退化的个体表现出受损和逐渐恶化的遗传。他们被破坏的遗传，被认为可能会污染他们的孩子，事实上，整个人类物种。这一假设与后天特征遗传的信念广泛相关，这是1880-1930年生物学中激烈争论的一个概念。然而，在遗传科学中，关于获得性特征的遗传和退化过程的争论与关于再生过程的争论相匹配。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年至1925年在维也纳实验生物学研究所工作的科学家是个例外。拟议的项目将探讨社会，政治和智力的影响，导致他们强调再生及其应用于社会。该提案的重点是保罗·卡默勒和欧根施泰纳赫之间的合作。他们的研究涉及性行为，这是退化概念的传统堡垒。重点将是，拒绝民族主义，阶级和种族理论与卡默勒的社会主义和共产主义的观点导致了同样强烈的强调再生所产生的继承后天的特点。他认为使用继承是一个过程，可以对抗退化的负面影响，并通过再生，恢复和改善社会。卡默勒和施泰纳赫关于气候和男性气质的研究是一种实证性的尝试，旨在实现这一恢复。在科学领域，很少有问题比先天-后天问题在专家和政策制定者之间引起更多的争论。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最前沿，因为现在有几种方法挑战了克里克中心法则中隐含的基因型和表型之间的关系。这个词已经不再使用了，但是，正如哲学家伊恩·哈金所指出的，退化研究项目仍然很有说服力：“退化的生物学标志又回来了，不是作为伦勃罗斯人的外貌，而是作为血清素耗竭或遗传标记。. . .只有一个方面是。. .简并程序与早期有很大不同。它来自基因的印记”（2001，第152页）。将生物学应用于重要的人类问题会引发复杂的科学和伦理问题。解决这些问题的最具信息性的方法之一是通过思想家提供的历史视角，这些思想家说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.