Final Solutions: Biology, Prejudice [Hardcover]

Richard M. Lerner (Author), Benno Muller-Hill (Foreword), Richard C. Lewontin (Foreword)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0271007931 | ISBN-13: 978-0271007939 | Publication Date: May 1992 | Edition: 1St Edition

In this cogently argued work Richard Lerner scrutinizes deterministic views of human nature and documents the pernicious uses to which they have too often been put. He also presents the scientific rationale for a more flexible view of human potential. ---Howard Gardner, Harvard University"Professor Lerner tells a story we need to know and presents a perspective we need to consider." ---Jerry Hirsch, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign"Final Solutions is a book about the extreme horrors that arise when people take seriously the proposition that there are racial and national characters from which we cannot escape. Unlike other books on Nazi race theory, Final Solutions extends ideas of determinism beyond the purely biological into the e cultural as well. Cultural determinism--- the doctrine that our cultural heritage passed down by a process of unconscious acculturation is inescapable-- differs only in a trivial mechanical detail from biological determinism, the doctrine that we cannot escape our genes. Both biological and cultural determinism deny essential freedom to human consciousness." ---R.C. Lewontin, from the Foreword

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

In this timely volume, an eminent professor of pediatrics and human development traces the very clear parallels linking Nazi theories of race and heredity--the warped ideology used to justify the Holocaust by those who perpetrated it--to current theories in the field of sociobiology. This is a work long needed, and the author has done a great service in undertaking it. Despite an overly heavy reliance on secondary sources, Lerner succeeds in hammering home two essential truths: that the political implications of research can indeed be independent of the political views of the scientists doing the work and that much science is in fact not independent of such views. Sociobiology lends itself to abuse by racists of all stripes, and this book provides welcome ammunition to those who would challenge them. For academic collections.
- Glenn Petersen, Baruch Coll., CUNY
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 238 pages
• Publisher: Penn State University Press; 1St Edition edition (May 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0271007931
• ISBN-13: 978-0271007939
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,243,166 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Final Solutions hits the mark, January 1, 2000

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[e-mail] (Ithaca, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Final Solutions: Biology, Prejudice (Hardcover)

Lerner's book describes in vivid detail how, when taken too far, people can let their own dogma get the best of them. Final Solutions extends ideas of determinism beyond the purely bilogical and includes the cultural as well. He demonstrates how people like social scientist and Social Darwinist Richard Herrstein perpetuate the belief that the society we live in today is "just and fair" to all. In that belief, one would consequently arrive at the conclusion that the poor, weak, homeless, and otherwise downtrodden are in their rightful stations in life. The author finds these views to be dangerous because of their ability to cloud the judgement of others who willingly accept it as fact rather than engaging in self-exploration.

This book thus is about much more than THE Final Solution that has become the familiar term that describes the Nazi annihilation of the Jews during WWII. It vividly points out how thoughts, followed by human aggression, followed by selection (targeting groups for mass execution or just creating social, economic, or political obstacles to their progress) is pernicious. Final Solutions descibes then the process of hate and how it is inextricably linked to one's genetic make up. That combination of enmity and genetic make up, Lerner warns us, has (and may continue to in the future) led to genocide.

On the whole, Final Solution reminds us that the doctrine of both biological and cultural determinism inhibits and outright denies human freedom --- not just to those pre-selected groups, but to us all.