George Thompson (the British classical scholar and Caldwell / Stalin / Mao marxist) made an interesting observation in one of his books, which while not quite a theory is worth some thought. He argued that the physical and biological sciences were only "allowed" to develop when and if their results became crucial to capital. His particular instance was Darwinian biology, which (my memory is vague on the exact argument) he said became respectable only when capital came to need the practical results of the biological sciences, results which were inseparable from Darwinism.
Carrol
The biological sciences have provided a persuasive legitimizing ideology for capitalism from the very beginning. The first explorations of 'modern' biology were done with the goal of categorizing various species and sub-species into a hierarchy of perfection. Since Europeans were placed higher up the ladder than Africans and native Americans, the European colonization of the Americas and Africa and the domination of native populations was completely justified. The particular biological paradigm of placing groups of individuals on a scale of perfection was largely concurrent with mercantile capitalism.
The concept of natural selection and the existence of variation between individuals first began to appear at about the same time as industrial capitalism began to develop. The ability of a science to justify the class mobility of the newly emergent bourgeoisie, and the lack thereof on the part of the newly emergent proletariat, became another vital part of capitalist ideology. Those that succeed do so because they are inherently more intelligent (larger brain cases, etc.), those that don't, because of smaller brains. (This dichotomy was also used along gender and race lines as women and non-Europeans had demonstrably smaller brains.) The initial biological paradigm of a hierarchy of groups was not applicable to a class-based capitalist system where the emerging dominant class was generally not from a historically recognized socioeconomically dominant group. Before the modern synthesis (the theoretical unification of Darwinian natural selection and Mendelian genetics of heritability), biology was used predominantly to explain individual success or lack thereof. There was little discussion of inheritance of success across generations.
The modern synthesis opened the door for a long-term legitimizing ideology that could justify the development of a permanent non-class mobile proletariat. This particular biological paradigm began to appear at about the same time as industrial capitalism began a transformation to finance capitalism. Post-World War II the biological reductionist scientific paradigms lost some momentum as, at least in the US, Fordism celebrated a brief success. The use of biology as an explanation for class, race and gender inequality again gained momentum during the 1960's with the publication of Wilson's Sociobiology. While most biological reductionism has not been as explicit as The Bell Curve, blaming genetics for social 'problems' has become commonplace. (The search for a genes for homosexuality and violence, the emphasis on the Human Genome Project as the cure for all health problems, etc.) The advantage of this particular approach, from capitalism's perspective, is that gene's are highly individualized and immutable. No longer does the justification for any social inequality rest even on mere biological differences. Now everything can be linked to one's genes, which are, ultimately, unchangeable. Biology has developed the perfect legitimizing ideology. The perfectly 'objective' conclusions of science have demonstrated that social inequality exists because it is in our genes.
By the way, does anyone have on hand a copy of Gould's Mismeasure of Man? There is a perfect quote in there from a biologist at the turn of the century about how low IQ causes someone to become a Bolshevik.
-Juliana