In hmolscience, Samuel Holmes (1868-1964) was an American zoologist note for []
Overview
In 1944, Holmes, in response to Thomas Huxley’s “Evolution and Ethics” (1893) lecture, published “Life, Morals, and Huxley’s ‘Evolution and Ethics’”, which, as cited by Judson Herrick (1956), supposedly, dealt with the puzzle of altruism in the struggle for existence model. [1]
In 1948, Holmes, in his Life and Morals, a more-comprehensive work, supposedly citing Herbert Spencer’s term “organically moral”, asserted that man alone among the animals is organically moral because he has the capacity to create an ideal of goodness, i.e. of fitness, in terms of social relations and obligations.
Holmes, of note, accepted Edward Westermarck’s relativity of ethics, such as presented in his Ethical Relativity (1932), but found the ethics expounded by Thomas Hobbes, in his Leviathan, to be “most disturbing”. [4]
Holmes, in this work, argued for a naturalistic theory of ethics, according to which morals had a natural origin, but that Darwinian evolution “does not logically compel me to adopt any one standard conduct rather than another. [3]
Holmes system of ethics, to note, led him into vocal eugenics avocation, particularly in respect to Mexican-American immigrations in California, arguing to the affect that it was right to sterilize citizens and immigrants who might diminish the genetic quality of America. (Ѻ)
References
1. (a) Huxley, Thomas. (1893). “Evolution and Ethics” (Ѻ), Romanes Lecture; in: Collected Essays, Volume IX.
(b) Holmes, Samuel J. (1944). “Life, Morals, and Huxley’s ‘Evolution and Ethics’”; in: Science in the University (pg. 319-32). University of California Press.
(b) Herrick, C. Judson. (1956). The Evolution of Human Nature (abs) (pg. 215). University of Texas Press.
2. (a) Holmes, Samuel J. (1948). Life and Morals. Macmillan.
(b) Herrick, C. Judson. (1956). The Evolution of Human Nature (abs) (pg. 215). University of Texas Press.
3. Farber, Paul L. (1994). The Temptations of Evolutionary Ethics (pg. 140). University of California Press.
4. (a) Westermarck, Edward. (1932). Ethical Relativity. Littlefield, 1960.
(b) Ethical Relativity – Wikipedia.
(c) Edvard Westermarck – Wikipedia.
(d) Holmes, Samuel J. (1948). Life and Morals (pg. 220). Macmillan.
(e) Farber, Paul L. (1994). The Temptations of Evolutionary Ethics (pg. 140). University of California Press.
Further reading
● Holmes, Samuel J. (1948). Organic Form and Related Biological Problems. University of California Press.
● Holmes, Samuel J. (1948). “What is Natural Selection?”, Scientific Monthly, 67:324-30.
External links
● Samuel Jackson Holmes – Wikipedia.
