Reply #18: Social Darwinism existed BEFORE Darwin... [View All]

[JCMach1]

Check you historical facts Annie

Also, they don't want to dig too deep into this because social Darwinism is at the heart of what it means to be Republican!!!





When most people hear the words “social Darwinism”, they immediate think of Charles Darwin and his work with the evolution of plants and animals. While it is important to understand his work, social Darwinism was actually not conceived by Darwin himself. In fact, he did not even address humans in his Origin of Species in 1859. The only connection is that social Darwinists use the theories of evolution set forth by the famous naturalist and apply these to humans. Before it was known as social Darwinism, survival-of-the-fittest was the term coined in the 1850’s by Englishman Herbert Spencer who stated that “through competition, social evolution would automatically produce prosperity and personal liberty unparalleled in human history” (Bannister, 2004). From there, social Darwinism took the world by storm and is still talked about today.

Social Darwinism was spreading around the world, and was officially brought to the United States in 1883 when Herbert Spencer came to visit his close friend and steel-manufacturing tycoon Andrew Carnegie (Bannister, 2004). Spencer combined forces with William Sumner of Yale University, who received much opposition for promoting the “dog-eat-dog” philosophy that “justified oppressive social policies” (Bannister, 2004). While the original foundations of social Darwinism were simply meant to explain how humans evolve into and within social groups, these guidelines turned into much more. Carnegie used it as reasoning for allowing his business to grow larger and as an excuse to weed out the unfit (Social Darwinism, 2004). Eventually, the United States government began using this to “explain the philosophical rationalization behind racism, imperialism, and capitalism” (Bannister, 2004). This trend started by the US spread, and the world eventually began to suffer under exploited social Darwinism... http://www.georgetown.edu/faculty/sd224/Classes/Modern%20Primitives/Fall2004/F2004Reports/WelterSocialDarwinism.htm




Herbert Spencer (1820­1903) was thinking about ideas of evolution and progress before Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species (1859). Nonetheless, his ideas received a major boost from Darwin's theories and the general application of ideas such as "adaptation" and "survival of the fittest" to social thought is known as "Social Darwinism". It would be possible to argue that human evolution showed the benefits of cooperation and community. Spencer, and Social Darwinists after him took another view. He believed that society was evolving toward increasing freedom for individuals; and so held that government intervention, ought to be minimal in social and political life... http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/spencer-darwin.html

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heorists and Sources of Social Darwinism
Herbert Spencer.
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Herbert Spencer.

Despite the fact that Social Darwinism bears Darwin's name and Darwin's works were widely read by Social Darwinists, the theory also draws on the work of many authors, including Herbert Spencer, Thomas Malthus, and Francis Galton, the founder of eugenics. Darwin distanced himself from social darwinism in The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871).

Herbert Spencer's ideas, like that of evolutionary 'progressivism', stemmed from his reading of Thomas Malthus, and his later theories were influenced by those of Darwin. However Spencer's major work, Progress: Its Law and Cause (1857) was released two years before the publication of Darwin's Origin Of Species, and First Principles was printed in 1860. In regards to social institutions, there is a good case that Spencer's writings might be classified as 'Social Darwinism'. He argues that the individual (rather than the collectivity) is the unit of analysis that evolves, that evolution takes place through natural selection, and that it affects social as well as biological phenomena.

In many ways Spencer's theory of 'cosmic evolution' has much more in common with the works of Lamarck and August Comte's positivism work than Darwin. Darwin's theory is concerned with population, while Spencer's deals with the way an individual's motives influence humanity. Darwin's theory is probabilistic, i.e., based on changes in the environment that sooner or later influence the change of individuals, but do not have any single, specific goal. Spencer's is deterministic (the evolution of human society is the only logical consequence of its previous stage), fatalistic (it cannot be influenced by human actions), single path (it travels a single path, cannot skip any stages or change them) and progressively finalistic (there is a final, perfect society that will be eventually reached). Darwin's theory does not equal progress, except in the sense that the new, evolved species will be better suited to their changing environment. Spencer's theory introduces the concept of social progress — the new, evolved society is always better than the past.
Thomas Malthus.
Thomas Malthus.

Spencer's work also served to renew interest in the work of Malthus. While Malthus's work does not itself qualify as Social Darwinism, his 1798 work An Essay on the Principle of Population, was incredibly popular and widely read by Social Darwinists. In that book, for example, the author argued that as an increasing population would normally outgrow its food supply, this would result in the starvation of the weakest and a Malthusian catastrophe. According to Michael Ruse, Darwin read Malthus' famous Essay on a Principle of Population in 1838, four years after Malthus' death. Malthus himself anticipated the Social Darwinists in suggesting that charity could exacerbate social problems. Another of these social interpretations of Darwin's biological views, later known as eugenics, was put forth by Darwin's cousin, Francis Galton, in 1865 and 1869. Galton argued that just as physical traits were clearly inherited among generations of people, so could be said for mental qualities (genius and talent). Galton argued that social mores needed to change so that heredity was a conscious decision, in order to avoid over-breeding by "less fit" members of society and the under-breeding of the "more fit" ones.
Francis Galton.
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Francis Galton.

In Galton's view, social institutions such as welfare and insane asylums were allowing "inferior" humans to survive and reproduce at levels faster than the more "superior" humans in respectable society, and if corrections were not soon taken, society would be awash with "inferiors." Darwin read his cousin's work with interest, and devoted sections of Descent of Man to discussion of Galton's theories. Neither Galton nor Darwin, though, advocated any eugenic policies such as those which would be undertaken in the early 20th century, as government coercion of any form was very much against their political opinions.

Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy addressed the question of artificial selection, but it was built against Darwinian theories of natural selection. His point of view on sickness and health, in particular, opposed him to the concept of biological "adaptation", forged by Spencer's "fitness". He criticized both Haeckel, Spencer and Darwin, sometimes under the same banner. Nietzsche thought that, in specific cases, sickness was necessary and even helpful <2>. Thus, he wrote:

Wherever progress is to ensue, deviating natures are of greatest importance. Every progress of the whole must be preceded by a partial weakening. The strongest natures retain the type, the weaker ones help to advance it. Something similar also happens in the individual. There is rarely a degeneration, a truncation, or even a vice or any physical or moral loss without an advantage somewhere else. In a warlike and restless clan, for example, the sicklier man may have occasion to be alone, and may therefore become quieter and wiser; the one-eyed man will have one eye the stronger; the blind man will see deeper inwardly, and certainly hear better. To this extent, the famous theory of the survival of the fittest does not seem to me to be the only viewpoint from which to explain the progress of strengthening of a man or of a race.<3>

The publication of Ernst Haeckel's best-selling Welträtsel ('Riddle of the Universe') in 1899 brought Social Darwinism and earlier ideas of "racial hygiene" to a very wide audience, and is recapitulation theory became famous. This lead to the formation of the Monist League in 1904 with many prominent citizens among its members, including the Nobel Prize winner Wilhelm Ostwald. By 1909 it had a membership of some six thousand people... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Darwinism