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Degeneration theory was a widely influential concept in the borderlands of social and biological science in the 19th century.〔Herman, Arthur (1997) ''The Idea of Decline in Western History'' New York, London etc.: The Free Press〕〔Pick, Daniel (1989) ''Faces of Degeneration: A European Disorder, c.1848 - c.1918'' Cambridge, London etc.: Cambridge University Press〕〔Dowbiggin, Ian (1985) Degeneration and hereditarianism in French mental medicine 1840-1890: psychiatric theory as ideological adaptation (in) ''The Anatomy of Madness, Vol. One: People and Ideas'' edited by Bynum William F., Porter, Roy and Shepherd, Michael, London and New York: Tavistock Publications, pp 188-232〕 Degenerationists feared that civilization might be in decline and that the causes of decline lay in biological change. These ideas derived from pre-scientific concepts of heredity with Lamarckian emphasis on biological development through purpose and habit. Degeneration concepts were often associated with authoritarian political attitudes, including nationalism, militarism, and racial science. The theory originated in racial concepts of ethnicity, as recorded in the writings of such medical scientists as Johann Blumenbach and Robert Knox. From the 1850s, it became influential in psychiatry through the writings of Bénédict Morel, and in criminology with Cesare Lombroso. By the 1890s, in the work of Max Nordau and others, degeneration became a more general concept in social commentary. The meaning of ''degeneration'' was poorly defined, but can be described as an organism's change from a more complex to a simpler, less differentiated form, and in this respect it is associated with 19th century conceptions of biological devolution. Although rejected by Charles Darwin, the theory's application to the social sciences was supported by some evolutionary biologists, most notably Ernst Haeckel and Ray Lankester. As the 19th century wore on, an increasing emphasis on degeneration reflected an anxious pessimism about the resilience of Western civilization and its possible decline and collapse. ==History== The concept of degeneration arose during the European enlightenment and the industrial revolution. Several influences were involved. The first related to the extreme demographic upheavals, including urbanization, in the early years of the 19th century. The disturbing experience of social change and urban crowds, largely unknown in the agrarian 18th century, was recorded in the novels of Charles Dickens and by early writers on social psychology, including Gustav Le Bon and Georg Simmel. Victorian social scientists including Edwin Chadwick, Henry Mayhew and Charles Booth voiced realistic concerns about the decline of public health in the urban life of the British working class. The everyday experience of contact with the working classes gave rise to a kind of horrified fascination with their perceived reproductive energies, which appeared to threaten middle-class culture. Secondly, the proto-evolutionary biology and transformatist speculations of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and other natural historians—taken together with the Baron von Cuvier's theory of extinctions—played an important role in establishing a sense of the unsettled nature of human society. The polygenic theories of racial origins, influenced by Robert Knox in his ''The Races of Men'' (1850), were firmly rejected by Charles Darwin who, along with James Cowles Prichard, generally supported a single African origin for the entire human species. Thirdly, the development of world trade and colonialism, the early European experience of globalization, resulted in an awareness of the unusual fragility of western civilization. Finally, the growth of historical scholarship in the 18th century, exemplified by Edward Gibbon's ''The History of the Decline and Fall of The Roman Empire'' (1776–1789), excited a renewed interest in the narratives of historical decline. This resonated uncomfortably with the travails of French political life in the post-revolutionary nineteenth century. Degeneration theory achieved a detailed articulation in Bénédict Morel's ''Treatise on Degeneration'' (1857), a complicated work of clinical commentary from an asylum in Normandy which, in the popular imagination at least, coalesced with de Gobineau's ''Essay on The Inequality of the Human Races'' (1855). Morel's concept of ''mental degeneration'' was a classic example of Lamarckian i.e. pre-Darwinian scientific theory. Arthur de Gobineau was the failed author of historical romances whose wife was widely rumored to be a Créole from Martinique, but who nevertheless argued that the course of history and of civilization was largely determined by ethnic factors, and that interracial marriage ("miscegenation") resulted in social chaos. His work was well received in German translation—not least by the composer Richard Wagner—and the leading German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin later wrote extensively on the dangers posed by degeneration to the German people. Morel's concept of "mental degeneracy" was taken up and advocated by his friend Philippe Buchez, and through his political influence became an official doctrine in French legal and administrative medicine. Quite different historical factors inspired the Italian Cesare Lombroso in his work on criminal anthropology and the notion of "atavistic retrogression", probably shaped by his experiences as a young army doctor in Calabria during the ''risorgimento''. In England, degeneration received a scientific formulation from Ray Lankester whose detailed discussions of the biology of parasitism were hugely influential; and the poor physical condition of many recruits for the second South African war (1899-1902) caused alarm in British government circles. The psychiatrist Henry Maudsley initially argued that degenerate family lines would die out of their own accord, but later became more pessimistic about the effects of degeneration on the British population.〔(Keeping America Sane: Psychiatry and Eugenics in the United States and Canada, 1880-1940 ) Pg 81〕 In the ''fin-de-siècle'' period, Max Nordau scored an unexpected success with his bestselling ''Degeneration'' (1892). Sigmund Freud met Nordau while studying in Paris and was notably unimpressed by him and hostile to the degeneration concept. Degeneration fell from popular and fashionable favor around the time of the First World War, although many of its preoccupations persisted in the writings of the eugenicists and social Darwinists. Oswald Spengler's ''The Decline of the West'' (1919) captured something of the degenerationist spirit in the aftermath of the war. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Degeneration theory」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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