Patrick Geddes Revisiting Ideas Behind the Evolution of Sex

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Recommended: Gender issues in the nineteenth century

Synopsis of the Reading and Its Impact in History

Patrick Geddes Revisiting Ideas Behind the Evolution of Sex

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, scientists armed with important discoveries and novel techniques began to reevaluate the theories of race and sex. One of the important thinkers of this time was the Scottish biologist Patrick Geddes. Like many other scientists of the time, Geddes applied Darwinian evolutionary theory to other non-scientific contexts. Although Geddes is more commonly associated with social ideologies such as economics, education, and urbanization, this examination will be limited to the impact of his ideologies regarding societal gender roles and sex-determination on society and the scientific community. The book entitled Sex, co-written by Patrick Geddes and J. Arthur Thomson was published in 1914 and concentrated on these issues of sex. The authors extrapolated on initial claims from their first book together, The Evolution of Sex by utilizing more “current” discoveries. The foundations for the ideas inherent in both books stem from August Weismann’s germ-plasm theory and Darwin’s evolutionary theory. Use of the latter theory is unsurprising since Geddes was the protégé of T.H. Huxley, often referred to as Darwin’s bulldog because of his infamous advocation of Darwinian theories. Nonetheless, the importance of Geddes work on societal gender roles and sex-determination is evidenced through his descriptions that allude to male superiority, while maintaining the view that women are not defective..

Geddes work described the evolution of sex to argue societal gender roles as naturally caused. The conception of roles as “naturally caused” implies fixed or invariable innate differences between the sexes which, through evolution, is made more apparent in higher organisms. This is central to the belief behind Geddes basis of gender roles. In the second chapter of his book Sex, Geddes begins by attributing significance to the microbial act of conjugation where two Vorticella connect to partially exchange genetic material before they separate. He describes these unicellular organisms as, “Analogues of males and females among multi-cellular organisms… they are like ova and spermatozoa which have not formed ‘bodies’” (Geddes, 23). Here, Geddes is correlating the act of conjugation to the act of sexual intercourse by the coming together and the exchange of genetic information.

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