Elsewhere on Britannica’s blog some folks are criticizing Ben Stein’s movie, Expelled, in context of an essay Stein wrote for the Expelled website. Robert McHenry writes:
“Darwinism . . . is a perfect example of the age from which it came: the age of Imperialism” [Stein says.]
And therefore . . . Well, he doesn’t say. This is called an enthymeme, or a rhetorical syllogism. The idea is that the conclusion gains force from seeming to occur spontaneously to the reader. This is the sort of thing that gives rhetoric a bad name.
But why isn’t “Darwinism” offered as a perfect example of, say, the Victorian Age? Or of the Steam Age? Or the Age of the Clipper Ship? Is it possible that Stein is loading the argument just a tad?
A little bit later he tells us that “Imperialism had a short but hideous history – of repression and murder.” He seems to think that the British, and specifically the Victorians, invented imperialism. This idea would surprise the Incas and the Arabs and the Spanish and the Portuguese, among others around the world. He seems also to believe that the results of European imperialism were uniformly terrible. Some were, some were not.
Somehow, I think McHenry is missing the point. Between the first quote and the second, Stein explains the therefore McHenry asks for. Stein writes:
But it fell to a true Imperialist, from a wealthy British family on both sides, married to a wealthy British woman, writing at the height of Imperialism in the UK, when a huge hunk of Africa and Asia was “owned” (literally, owned, by Great Britain) to create a scientific theory that rationalized Imperialism. By explaining that Imperialism worked from the level of the most modest organic life up to man, and that in every organic situation, the strong dominated the weak and eventually wiped them out, Darwin offered the most compelling argument yet for Imperialism. It was neither good nor bad, neither Liberal nor Conservative, but simply a fact of nature. In dominating Africa and Asia, Britain was simply acting in accordance with the dictates of life itself.
There’s a long comment thread after both essays.
