Muscular Modernity, Muscular Eugenics, Muscular Darwinism : survival of the FIT

Like Charles Darwin, I have come to see that the term "survival of the fittest" is a useful shorthand, but ringed with at least as many shortfalls as advantages.

The biggest by far being the incredibly large number of otherwise intelligent-appearing people who once mistook the survival of the 'fit' as being fully equal to the survival of the 'fittest' ---- when actually they were 180 degrees opposed.

Anti-Vax patients 2016 = Anti-Natural-Penicillin doctors 1940

I believe that Anti-Vax (unwarranted) concerns about heavy metals in vaccines and heavy money controlling vaccine approvals are just an unconscious smoke screen to hide these patients' free-floating fears and phobias.

Just as I believe that (unwarranted) concerns about the 'impurity' of natural penicillin among most of the world's doctors and scientists in early 1940s was equally an unconscious smokescreen to hide their similar free-floating fears and phobias.

We easily grant patients as being irrational --- but doctors and scientists, too ? Yep !

Pure Neo-Darwinism just dog whistle code for pure WASP ?

It is always interesting to discover that the most ardent and 'purest' of Neo-Darwinists are seemingly likely to also be English and Protestant (middle class and male, too, but we'll overlook that for the moment!)

WWII's 'war of ideas' ran at subterranean right angles to its 'war of weapons'

It is comparatively easy to sort out WWII's 'war of weapons' (particularly if one is allowed to view that war moment by moment, region by region), much less so for its 'war of ideas'.

SCIENCE purifies intellectual 'gene pool' : TECHNOLOGY diversifies it

I want to suggest a totally different way of looking at the vast difference between Science (theories) and Technology (tools).

Dawson's Unwashed Penicillin for the Great Unwashed or Florey's Pure Penicillin for the Pure & Fit ?

Wars, externally, may involve the clash of guns, but inside, they're really about the clash of ideas

You may think that the seventy five year old conflict over how best to make and distribute wartime penicillin was simply not capable of being freighted with the key clash of ideas and values behind WWII, but I am here trying to convince you that it was.

The greater evolutionary success, circa 1944 : Microbial diversity or Aryan uniformity ?

To Dr Martin Henry Dawson, after two decades of research into the astonishing and under-travelled scientific world of four billion years of microbial diversity, versatility and survival, the scientific answer to the secret of long term evolutionary success seemed perfectly clear.

This is not to say he did not also oppose Eugenics (Axis, Neutral & Allied) on purely moral grounds.

But in 1944, he stood almost alone in the scientific world in strongly opposing all attempts at perfecting, purifying and reducing the human gene pool.

For he saw it as positively harmful rather than helpful to humanity's future prospects.

he based this simply upon the great evolutionary success of the tiny, weak, simple, diverse bacteria versus the equally great survival failure of the much larger, stronger, smarter carnivores ---- and Nazis.....