Science and political ideology: The example of Nazi Germany

Authors

  • Ute Deichmann Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (Israel).

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7203/metode.10.13657

Keywords:

academic anti-Semitism, ecology and holism in Nazi Germany, science and values

Abstract

Although in their basic framework Nazi anti-Semitic and racist ideology and policies were not grounded in science, scientists not only supported them in various ways, but also took advantage of them, for example by using the new possibilities of unethical experimentation in humans that these ideologies provided. Scientists’ complicity with Nazi ideology and politics does, however, not mean that all sciences in Nazi Germany were ideologically tainted. I argue, rather, that despite the fact that some areas of science continued at high levels, science in Nazi Germany was most negatively affected not by the imposition of Nazi ideology on the conduct of science but by the enactment of legal measures that ensured the expulsion of Jewish scientists. The anti-Semitism of young faculty and students was particularly virulent. Moreover, I show that scientists supported Nazi ideologies and policies not only through so-called reductionist science such as eugenics and race-hygiene, but also by promoting organicist and holistic ideologies of the racial state.

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Author Biography

Ute Deichmann, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (Israel).

Director of the Jacques Loeb Centre for the History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (Israel), and adjunct professor at this university and the University of Cologne (Germany). Her research is on the origin and change of modern biology concepts and on the impact of various ideologies on science.  Recent publications include: Epigenetics: The origin and evolution of a fashionable topic and Biologists under Hitler. For her work she was awarded several prizes, such as the Ladislaus Laszt Awart of the Ben-Gurion University and the Gmelin-Beilstein Memorial Medal of the German Chemical Society.

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Published

2020-01-08

How to Cite

Deichmann, U. (2020). Science and political ideology: The example of Nazi Germany. Metode Science Studies Journal, (10), 129–137. https://doi.org/10.7203/metode.10.13657
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Science and Nazism. The unconfessed collaboration of scientists with National Socialism

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