Social Degeneration was a widely influential concept at the interface of social and biological science in the 19th century. Degenerationists feared that civilization might be in decline and that the causes of decline lay in biological change. These ideas derived from pre-scientific concepts of
heredity with
Lamarckian emphasis on biological development through purpose and habit. Degeneration concepts were often associated with authoritarian political attitudes, including fears of national decline,
militarism, and
racial science. The theory originated in racial concepts of
ethnicity, as recorded in the writings of such medical scientists as
Johann Blumenbach and
Robert Knox. From the 1850s, it became influential in
psychiatry through the writings of
Bénédict Morel, and in
criminology with
Cesare Lombroso. By the 1890s, in the work of
Max Nordau and others, degeneration became a more general concept in
social commentary.