Today we often prefer a self-conscious circling back to older ideas (usually meaning "anything other than modernist" ideas) , rather than constantly seeking out ever newer ideas.
But because of our awareness that those older ideas have been very heavily modified by the weight of history upon them since they were first articulated, we prefer to prefix them with Neo- .
Henry Dawson's early Neo-Plenitude
Dr Henry Dawson died in early 1945, long before this Neo- trend had become a flood.
He hadn't yet found the sort of external fame that encourages the more intellectually timid scientists like himself to begin to write daring popular science books for lay people.
That external fame is needed for the timid to survive the career damage (from aggressively-Alpha scientific opponents) for their daring to rock the orthodoxy.
At the apogee of Plenticidal Modernity, he was an odd man out in his rare scientific interest in (and support for) the biological and social value of the widest possible genetic and cultural variety.
Older (once nearly universal) human support for what today we might call "the widest possible gene pool" was contained in the (inaccurate) scientific beliefs in a Great Chain of Being , replete with the maximum of species plenitude and a self-righting balance of nature.
But the new (post-God) modernist scientific consensus said that all of Nature (non-living as well as living) was just too full of useless plenitude.
And, further , that it would be greatly improved if only it was heavily pruned - starting with all the useless branches within the human orchard. (Cue Himmler.)
Modernist Eugenics thus was not at all a pseudo science --- but neither was it a mere branch of modernist science --- it was in fact the intellectual cornerstone of all modernist science.
Humanitarians, internationalists, cosmopolitans (Dawson among them) all tried to oppose this scientific notion on ethical grounds.
To absolutely no fundamental effect. (See the WWII Allies & Axis, for proof.)
But Dawson also came to fruitfully oppose Eugenics cum Modernity on its own chosen grounds - for scientific reasons - and here , I argue, he has ultimately had far more success.
(Albeit about 60 years after began his effort in the late 1920s !)
But his new scientific beliefs merely seemed to echo old pre-modern ideas supporting genetic plenitude.
He actually believed fully in Darwinian Evolution.
And he had come to believe that Evolution (and Life itself ) would quickly fail there was no abundant variety for natural selection to work upon.
This is why I say he held Neo-Plenitude ideas on genetic plenitude, rather than actually reviving the actual pre-modern ideas around plenitude.
Dawson never seems to have advocated these scientific beliefs in print, only in private conversations and at class seminars ; possibly because as a busy working hospital doctor, his could be a biography of actual deeds rather than mere words.
By contrast, his fellow professor at Columbia university, Theodosius Dobzhansky, was practically forced to write lots of books on these new scientific ideas that he also held.
As a biology professor, rather than an applied scientist , that was about Dobzhansky's only real option for opposing this aspect of eugenics.
In Dawson's own lifetime , his main success in opposing eugenic "bio reduction" was America's short-lived Pax Penicillia .
That was Pax Americana's brief lost opportunity - those brief two years after the saving of Baby Girl (Patricia Malone) in early August 1943 and before the dropping of Little Boy in early August 1945 .
And so that is the main focus of my book on Dawson's life and career...
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