CHARLES DARWIN RESEARCH INSTITUTE

The Charles Darwin Research Institute (CDRI) is a scientific and educational foundation established to honor and extend the scientific revolution inaugurated by one of the greatest figures in the history of human thought. Charles Darwin (1809-1882) forever changed the way we look at nature and at ourselves.

Founded in 1989 by Guggenheim Fellow and University of Western Ontario psychology professor J. Philippe Rushton, the CDRI is a 501(c)(3) charity set up to guarantee academic freedom for research on race differences. Following a talk given by Rushton at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, radical groups fueled a media campaign causing the Premier of Ontario to call for his dismissal, the Ontario Provincial Police to mount a formal investigation, and university administrators to try to dismiss him. Professor Rushton gives an account of the affair in “The New Enemies of Evolutionary Science” in the March 1998 issue of Liberty magazine (see Stalking The Wild Taboo website).

Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, set out in The Origin of Species (1859), The Descent of Man (1871), and The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals (1872) challenged the Genesis account of special creation of species. It implied a continuity of humans and animals, of within-species and between-species variation, not only in body but in behavior (or mind) as well (see Darwin’s Really Dangerous Idea). Darwin’s Origin of Species inspired his cousin, Sir Francis Galton to build upon the concepts of variation and selection when he established the science of differential psychology in his book Hereditary Genius (1869) (see Galton and Differential Psychology ).

The Charles Darwin Research Institute is dedicated to furthering the Darwinian perspective in the behavioral sciences. Its scope is multi-disciplinary, supporting research in traditional fields such as anthropology, psychology, and sociology as well as the newly emerged disciplines of behavioral genetics, neuroscience, and sociobiology. From the Darwinian perspective there are no fixed boundaries between disciplines, only different questions to be asked and answered. The research supported by CDRI looks at our evolutionary past (human origins), our present (individual and group differences), and our future (the impact of technology and globalization on reproduction and demography).

The Charles Darwin Research Institute solicits funds, and in turn awards grants for vital new research in these areas and for the multi-media dissemination of those findings to the public. Like the genius it is named to honor, CDRI is resolved to help us better understand our similarities, our differences, our past, and our future, however upsetting those findings may be to entrenched religious or political dogmas (see The Campaign to Undermine Darwinism and Race, Evolution, and Behavior). To that end, CDRI funds research projects that might not be supported elsewhere and makes multi-media dissemination the results of such research a co-equal priority (see Disseminating Research Findings).

Evolution is the scientific study of variation and selection. As such, establishing the Darwinian perspective in the social sciences has been much impeded by political and religious ideologies. The Institute is especially concerned to resist encroachments on scholarship by forces of “political correctness.”

Some of the politically inspired resistance to Darwinism in human affairs comes from evolutionary scientists themselves. By overemphasizing the search for universals, that is, pan-human traits (partly to show people’s commonalities), many evolutionists abandon the very comparative method that created the Darwinian Revolution in the first place.

Ignoring or minimizing the role of heritable variation goes against the two basic postulates of Darwinian theory: (1) that genetic variation exists within species, and (2) that differential reproductive success favors some varieties over others. In both Origin and Descent, Darwin left no doubt about the importance he ascribed to variation. In the Origin (p. 107), he wrote:

Hence I look at individual differences, though of small interest to the systematist, as of high importance for us, as being the first step towards such slight varieties as are barely thought worth recording in works on natural history. And I look at varieties which are in any degree more distinct and permanent, as a step leading to more strongly marked and more permanent varieties; and at these latter, as leading to sub-species, and to species . . Hence I believe a well marked variety may be justly called an incipient species.

Sir Francis Galton (1865, 1869), Darwin’s cousin, immediately recognized the implications for human variation. Galton carried out surveys and found that good and bad temperament, as well as intelligence, ran in families. He discovered the phenomenon of regression-to-the mean and the implication that family variation was heritable.

Galton also reviewed accounts contrasting the taciturn reserve of American Indians with the talkative impulsivity of Africans. He noted that these temperamental differences persisted regardless of climate (from the frozen north through the equator), religion, language, or political system (whether self-ruled or governed by the Spanish, Portuguese, English, or French). Anticipating later work on transracial adoption, Galton pointed out that the majority of individuals adhered to their racial type, even if they were raised by white settlers.

Based on his readings and his personal experiences of exploring Southwest Africa, Galton concluded that the average mental ability of Africans was low, whether they were observed in Africa or in the Americas. In Descent, Darwin acknowledged Galton’s work and also accepted the importance of the brain-size differences reported between Africans and Europeans by Paul Broca and other nineteenth-century scientists.

Modern studies confirm Darwin and Galton. The races do differ in average brain size and intelligence. The racial gradient in average intelligence and brain size increases from Africans to Europeans to East Asians.

Although Darwinians emerged victorious among the educated classes in their nineteenth-century battles against Biblical theology, subsequently they lost that ground to egalitarians, Marxists, cultural-relativists, and postmodernists. From Herbert Spencer (1851) to the world depressions of the late 1920s and 1930s, while the political right was ascendant, the political left came to believe, perhaps correctly, that “survival of the fittest” was incompatible with social equality.

Beginning in the 1920s when the Franz Boas school of anthropology succeeded in decoupling the biological from the social sciences, Darwinism has been marginalized in the human sciences. Although early in the century William McDougall had proposed an “instinct” theory of personality, and G. Stanley Hall had advanced an evolutionary perspective for developmental psychology, Darwinism was swept away in the 1920s by various environmentalist doctrines. Freud’s Oedipal theories and Watson’s behavioral molding of individuals were compatible with Marx’s assumptions of the malleability of entire social groups through government intervention.

In the 1950s, hostility to the record of Nazi racial atrocities tainted attempts to restore Darwinism to the social sciences. From that time on, it became increasingly difficult to suggest that individuals or groups might differ genetically in behavior without being accused of Nazi sympathies.

Those who believed in the biological identity of all people, on the other hand, remained free to write what they liked, without fear of vilification. In the intervening decades, the idea of a genetically based core of human nature on which individuals and groups might differ was consistently derogated. This intellectual movement has been politically fueled by successively coupling it to Third World decolonization, the U.S. civil rights movement, the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, and the renewed debates over immigration.

Let us be explicit about the problem faced by Darwinian psychology — political correctness. Its central thesis is the environmental determinism of all important human traits. It stems from Marxism and a belief that social and economic oppression are the cause of all significant individual and group behavioral differences. The Marxist hold on liberal political sentiment is so extensive many of us think that way without realizing it. We censor ourselves lest we even dare to think the forbidden thoughts.

In a 1975 paper invited by the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Professor Hans Eysenck, himself a refugee from Hitler’s Germany but a strong advocate of Darwinian bio-social psychology and the doyen of British psychology, wrote:

It used to be taken for granted that it was not only ethically right for scientists to make public their discoveries; it was regarded as their duty to do so. Secrecy, the withholding of information, and the refusal to communicate knowledge were rightly regarded as cardinal sins against the scientific ethos. This is true no more. In recent years it has been argued, more and more vociferously, that scientists should have regard for the social consequences of their discoveries, and of their pronouncements; if these consequences are undesirable, the research in the area involved should be terminated, and the results already achieved should not be publicized. The area which has seen most of this kind of argumentation is of course that concerned with inheritance of intelligence, and with racial differences in ability.

Richard Lynn, another British Darwinian psychologist, noted that many politically left-of-center scientists are currently in the same position as Christians were after the publication of The Origin of Species. He called on liberals to do what honest, intelligent Christians did then and what many still do today. Bite the bullet, and jettison those aspects of their world view (like egalitarianism) that are incompatible with the science of natural selection. Political correctness must be discarded if evolutionary theory is to achieve its full promise to become the unifying framework for the human sciences.

The Charles Darwin Research Institute has recently re-published both a 2nd Special Abridged Edition and the Third Unabridged Edition of Rushton’s Race, Evolution, and Behavior in order to bypass the gatekeepers and actively promulgate the scientific knowledge about race and human variation to media figures, interested general readers, citizen groups with interest in these topics, and students, by mass mailings of the booklet, putting it on the internet and eventually perhaps by producing audio books and video tapes.

• Tracing the Evolutionary and Cultural Journey of Cannabis from Neolithic Fiber to Modern Legalization
• Exploring Genetic Variations in THC Metabolism: An Interview with a Pharmacogeneticist on CYP2C9, CYP3A4, FAAH, and UGT Gene Variants
• The Evolutionary Genesis of the Endocannabinoid System in Mammalian Homeostasis: A Comparative Analysis of Receptor Types, Ligands, and Signaling Cascades
• The Role of Natural Selection in Human Adaptation to Phytochemicals

Bulk orders are available for the 2nd Special Abridged Edition of Race, Evolution, and Behavior. This 110-page pocketbook, published in the year 2000, summarizes important social and behavioral science research on race and race differences. Bulk rates are available for seminars, workshops, or for distribution to media figures (especially columnists who write about race issues), professors, teachers, and anyone interested in this vital subject.

Single copy $5.95

2nd Abridged Edition Bulk Rates

• 10 copies: $25.00
• 25 copies: $50.00
• 50 copies: $75.00
• 100 copies: $100.00
• 500 copies: $300.00
• 1000 copies: $400.00

All prices include postage & handling.

The Third Unabridged Edition of Race, Evolution, and Behavior, also published in the year 2000, contains over 1,000 references to the scholarly literature, a glossary, complete name and subject indexes, and 65 charts, maps, tables, and figures. It is an essential reference book for professionals and students of anthropology, psychology, sociology, and race relations. The hardcover unabridged Race, Evolution, and Behavior ($24) is especially appropriate for donation to public libraries, colleges and universities. The softcover unabridged edition ($14) provides a more economical way to order as a college or graduate school text. (Add $4.50 postage and handling for 1st copy; $1.00 more for each additional book.)

The CD Audio Abridged Edition of Race, Evolution, and Behavior, published in the year 2001, costs $8.99 plus $4.50 postage and handling for 1st copy; $1.00 more for each additional CD.

For the 2nd Special Abridged Edition, the CD Audio Abridged Edition, or either of the Third Unabridged Editions, write to the Charles Darwin Research Institute, P.O. Box 611305, Port Huron, MI 48061-1305