Well, I got Narrow Roads of Gene Land, Volume 2: Evolution of Sex in the mail yesterday. Godless blogged about Hamilton’s book here, here and here. I’m going to read it front to back, though I’ve skimmed a bit of almost every chapter. This is not a book for the faint of heart. Let me display some excisions from the preface….
page xlviii: “…if a family wants to keep a particular vegetable baby alive, the family must pay for it. Similarly, if a church objects to the alternative-letting the baby die-extra taxes to pay for the baby’s special care will be required from specifically that church’s coffers….”
“…so I believe that other self-defined yet quite different groups of idealists should be allowed to practise a religion that includes parent-decided selective infanticide, provided this is done under good safeguards against cruelty….”
Rather strange how great scientists like Hamilton or Francis Crick broach the topic of infanticide. The prose seems somewhat rambling, but every other sentence provokes by the substance of the content and the boldness of presentation.
In chapter 8, titled Instability and cycling of two competing hosts with two parasites, Hamilton concludes with criticisms of Jewish intellectuals who promote panhumanism and support Israel’s ethnic orientation followed by an injunction toward interpopulation breeding to promote disease resistance (something I’ve talked about before).
I think that here Hamilton is rather unfair to the Jewish intellectuals he criticizes, Karl Popper, S.J. Gould and Dick Lewontin. Knowing the political orientations of the latter two I would be skeptical if they were particularly concerned with Israel, but I know for a fact that Karl Popper denounced excessive concern with Jewish ethnicity. Popper was actually from a converted family, his parents became Lutheran before he was born, and he represented the cosmopolitanism of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Hamilton notes that Popper wrote Open Society and Its Enemies, evidence of Popper’s hypocrisy. But, this is the Karl Popper who wrote this (source Wittgenstein’s Poker):
I do not believe in race; I abhor any form of racialism or nationalism; and I never belonged to the Jewish faith. Thus I do not see on what grounds I could possibly consider myself as a Jew. I do sympathize with minorities; but althought this has made me stress my Jewish origin, I do not consider myself a Jew.
…But racial pride is not only stupid but wrong, even if provoked by racial hatred. All nationalism or racialism is evil, and Jewish nationalism is no exception.
Whatever objections Hamilton would have with Popper, and no doubt there would remain a non-trivial number of them, to accuse him of hypocritical Jewish chauvinism is a barb founded on ignorance. Nonetheless, I do find it interesting that Hamilton would address this question, as it is certainly taboo, though perhaps less so in Europe.
Posted by razib at 07:56 PM