To many observers, the recent evolution wars in the US seem a revival of the historic 1925 Scopes trial, with William Jennings Bryan cast as the intellectual forbearer of today's creationists and proponents of intelligent design. This paper argues against drawing too close a parallel between these two episodes. Using Bryan's unread closing remarks as a key to his views, this revisionist historical work argues that Bryan opposed evolution primarily for political and ethical reasons---reasons that have been lost to historical memory. Bryan's overarching concern was the threat to society posed by extrapolations of evolutionary doctrine---namely, Social Darwinism and eugenics. His commitment to the Social Gospel put him at odds with the concept of natural selection being applied to humans. This view of Bryan differs from the one with which we are most familiar. Our faulty historical memory largely reflects the caricatured view of Scopes spawned by the movie Inherit the Wind, a view that, furthermore, reinforces an unhelpful positivistic view of science.
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Shapiro, Adam R.;
(2013)
Trying Biology: The Scopes Trial, Textbooks, and the Antievolution Movement in American Schools
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Larson, Edward J.;
(2009)
That the Scopes Trial Ended in Defeat for Antievolutionism
(/isis/citation/CBB001032215/)
Book
Moran, Jeffrey P.;
(2002)
The Scopes Trial: A Brief History with Documents
(/isis/citation/CBB000302274/)
Book
Laats, Adam;
(2010)
Fundamentalism and Education in the Scopes Era: God, Darwin, and the Roots of America's Culture Wars
(/isis/citation/CBB001033489/)
Book
Caudill, Edward;
Larson, Edward J.;
Mayshark, Jesse Fox;
(2000)
The Scopes Trial: A Photographic History
(/isis/citation/CBB000358502/)
Chapter
Descamps, Philippe;
(2010)
Le sacre de l'espèce humaine ou comment le droit français se préoccupe de l'évolution de l'homme
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Article
Laats, Adam;
(2011)
Monkeys, Bibles, and the Little Red Schoolhouse: Atlanta's School Battles in the Scopes Era
(/isis/citation/CBB001231357/)
Article
Davis, Edward B.;
(2005)
Science and Religious Fundamentalism in the 1920s: Religious Pamphlets by Leading Scientists of the Scopes Era Provide Insight into Public Debates about Science and Religion
(/isis/citation/CBB000660509/)
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Singham, Mano;
(2011)
God vs. Darwin: The War between Evolution and Creationism in the Classroom
(/isis/citation/CBB001033153/)
Article
Renwick, Chris;
(2011)
From Political Economy to Sociology: Francis Galton and the Social-Scientific Origins of Eugenics
(/isis/citation/CBB001024706/)
Book
Crook, Paul;
(2007)
Darwin's Coat-Tails: Essays on Social Darwinism
(/isis/citation/CBB000850675/)
Article
Sullivan, Gregory;
(2011)
The Instinctual Nation-State: Non-Darwinian Theories, State Science and Ultra-Nationalism in Oka Asajiro's Evolution and Human Life
(/isis/citation/CBB001220952/)
Article
Weikart, Richard;
(2013)
The Role of Darwinism in Nazi Racial Thought
(/isis/citation/CBB001202011/)
Thesis
Clark, Constance Areson;
(2002)
Evolution for John Doe: Scientists, pictures and the public in the decade of the Scopes trial
(/isis/citation/CBB001562455/)
Article
Leonard, Thomas C.;
(2009)
Origins of the Myth of Social Darwinism: The Ambiguous Legacy of Richard Hofstadter's Social Darwinism in American Thought
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Article
Allen, Garland E.;
(2013)
“Culling the Herd”: Eugenics and the Conservation Movement in the United States, 1900--1940
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Book
Nourse, Victoria F.;
(2008)
In Reckless Hands: Skinner v. Oklahoma and the Near Triumph of American Eugenics
(/isis/citation/CBB000960151/)
Thesis
Bruni, John P.;
(2003)
Making the Fittest Culture: Social Darwinism and American Naturalist Writing at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
(/isis/citation/CBB001560857/)
Article
Depew, David J.;
(2010)
Darwinian Controversies: An Historiographical Recounting
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Thesis
Christopher W. Howell;
(2021)
Designer Science: A History of Intelligent Design in America
(/isis/citation/CBB325390187/)
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