Religion & Law

The surge of enthusiasm for eugenics came at a time when the majority of biologists had turned their backs on Darwinism. Even when natural selection began to attract more attention in the 1930s, there was no direct link to eugenics. If R. A. Fisher supported eugenics, the co-founder of population genetics, J. B. S. Haldane, wrote openly against the movement from a socialist perspective. In America, the most effective scientific support for eugenics came from early Mendelians such as C. B. Davenport. ... [A]t this point the Mendelians were hostile to Darwinism and did not believe that natural selection played any role in the evolution of new characters. The popularity of eugenics must thus be accounted for in terms of broader social factors. It was certainly not the result of Darwinism promoting the idea of artificial selection of the human population.

- Peter J. Bowler, The Non-Darwinian Revolution