biological determinism

Examples of biological determinism in the following topics:

• The Family Economy: Women and Children

  • The notion of separate spheres dictates that men, based primarily on their biological makeup as well as on the will of God, inhabit the public sphere—the world of politics, economy, commerce, and law.
  • The separation between female and male spheres was heavily influenced by biological determinism, the notion that women and men are naturally suitable for different social roles due to their biological and genetic makeup.
  • The idea of biological determinism was popular during the Age of Enlightenment and among such thinkers as Jean-Jacques Rousseau who argued that women were inherently different from men and should devote themselves to reproduction and domesticity.
  • By the early twentieth century, however, dissident anthropologists and other social scientists began to challenge the biological determination of human behavior, revealing great similarities between men and women and suggesting that many gender differences were socially constructed.

• Literary Naturalism

  • They believed that heredity and social environment largely determine one's character.
  • Whereas realism seeks only to describe subjects as they really are, naturalism also attempts to determine the underlying forces (e.g., the environment or heredity) influencing the actions of its subjects.
  • Another characteristic of naturalism is determinism, the opposite of the notion of free will.
  • For determinism, the idea that individual characters have a direct influence on the course of their lives is supplanted by a focus on nature or fate.
  • Often, a naturalist author will lead the reader to believe a character's fate has been pre-determined, usually by environmental factors, and that he/she can do nothing about it.

• NATO and the Militarization and Interventions Abroad

  • The US also allowed the shipment of "dual use" materials, that could be used for chemical and biological weapons, ostensibly for agriculture, medical research, and other civilian purposes, but they were diverted for use in Saddam's weapons of mass destruction programs.

• The Eugenics

  • The American eugenics movement was rooted in the biological determinist ideas of Sir Francis Galton, which originated in the 1880s.

• The Scopes Trial

  • Based on research in Charles Darwin’s 1859 book, On the Origin of Species, the theory contends that man developed over millions of years from other biological organisms, including apes (hence the nickname "Scopes Monkey Trial.")

• Social Darwinism in America

  • "Social Darwinism" is a name given to various theories emerging in the United Kingdom, North America, and western Europe in the 1870s that claim to apply biological concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest to sociology and politics.

• The Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan

  • The immediate impetus to the invasion, it argued, was the fear that Hussein was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction (WMDs): nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons capable of wreaking great havoc.
  • -led Iraq Survey Group concluded that Iraq had ended its nuclear, chemical, and biological programs in 1991 and had no active programs at the time of the invasion, but that they intended to resume production if the Iraq sanctions were lifted.

• The Eugenics Movement

  • The American Eugenics movement was rooted in the biological determinist ideas of Galton and included those who believed in genetic superiority of specific Caucasian groups, supported strict immigration and anti-miscegenation laws, and supported the forcible sterilization of the poor, disabled and "immoral."

• The Debate over Slavery

  • One of the most contentious slavery-related questions was whether slaves would be counted as part of the population in determining representation in Congress, or if they would be considered property and therefore exempt from representation.
  • Delegates from states with large populations of slaves argued that slaves should be considered as people in determining representation.
  • Delegates from states where slavery had become rare argued the opposite: that slaves should be included in taxation but not in determining representation.
  • The amendment was to have changed the basis for determining each state's wealth and, hence, its tax obligations, from real estate to population, as a measure of wealth-generating ability.

• The Progressive Stake in the War

  • Morality, liberal democracy and self-determination fueled Progressivism and its goals of eliminating government corruption and increasing efficiency and expertise in areas such as education and social justice.
  • Yet Progressives eventually came to believe that, in contrast to the great powers of the Concert of Europe, America possessed a superior moral position as the only great nation devoted to the principles of freedom, democracy and self-determination, and that those ideals could be achieved in a just war.
  • Wilson's speech translated many of the principles of Progressivism that had produced domestic reform in the U.S. into foreign policy encompassing free trade, open agreements, democracy, and self-determination, which was the ideal of nations determining their own futures without outside political or military interference.