Social Darwinism

Evolutionary psychologists go to some lengths to insist that, unlike exponents of earlier versions of social Darwinism, they are not genetic determinists, or as they sometimes put it, nativists. Rather, they argue that the nature/nurture dichotomy is a fallacious one. Instead, they seek to account for what they believe to be universals in terms of a version of Darwinian theory - a version which in practice owes more to Dawkins reductive fundamentalism than it does to Darwin s own more pluralistic and observation-rich insights. 

Tobach, E., Gianutsos, J. Topeff, H. R, and Gross, C. G. (1974) The Four Horsemen Racism, Militarism and Social Darwinism. New York Behavioral Publications. 

Gossett, Race, pp. 198-227 Robert Bannister, Social Darwinism Science and Myth in Anglo-American Social Thought (Philadelphia Temple University Press, 1979), pp. 212-225 Richard Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American Thought (Boston Beacon, 1944), pp. 143-200 Walter LaFeber, The New Empire An Interpretation of American Expansionism (Ithaca Cornell University Press, 1964) Jack London, The Sea-Wolf [1904] (New York New American Library, 1964), pp. 68-69, 24, 79 Frank Norris, McTeague [1899] (New York Norton, 1977), pp. 25, 135. 

Richard Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American Thought [1944] (Boston Beacon, 1955), p. 154 LaFeber, New Empire, pp. 72-80 Tuveson, Redeemer Nation, pp. 166-167, 137-175 passim. 

Kaye, H. L. (1986). The Social Meaning of Modern Biology Prom Social Darwinism to Sociobiology. New Haven, CT Yale University Press. 

While the individual Bond villains are monstrous and physically unattractive, U.N.C.LETs villains are seldom ugly, but often very charming, polite, highly educated, and cultured. Their goal is nearly always power, their style is somewhat corporate, and their philosophy is an extreme form of Social Darwinism, a total disregard for any responsibility to their fellow man. 

Social Darwinism was promoted especially by the fashionable philosopher of the 1870s, Eduard von Hartmann, for example in his Philosophie des Unbewufiten (1869 Philosophy of the Unconscious) (nth edition 1904). 

Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), a self-taught English philosopher and.sociologist, applied the biological idea of evolution to social development. He coined the term the survival of the fittest and his so-called Social Darwinism was applied to events within and between societies. Like Saint-Simon and Comte before him, Spencer had great faith in industrial progress and industrial societies. He associated them... 

Rose, H. (2000), Colonising the social sciences , in H. Rose and S. P. R. Rose (Eds), Alas Poor Darwin, Cape Random House, London, pp. 106-128. 

Thomas Kuhn, Structure, 172173. Stephen E. Toulmin, "The Evolutionary Development of Natural Science," American Scientist 55 (1967) 456471. David L. Hull, Science as a Process An Evolutionary Account of the Social and Conceptual Development of Science (Chicago University of Chicago Press, 1988) and Robert J. Richards, Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind and Behavior (Chicago University of Chicago Press, 1987). 

In human infants social odors are important from a few days after birth, as indicated by head turning in the direction of odors. In 1877, Darwin observed that an infant with its eyes closed would turn its head towards its mother when her breast was brought near. Darwin suggested that the infant might be attracted... 

Education is the key requirement for all to undertake. It is probably too much to ask all but a few to subscribe to Darwin s view.100 But there is much to be said for re-educating those populations, excessively given to seeking pleasure in unhealthful diversions, to use their resources in more worthy social pursuits. The needs were no doubt apparent before Roman times but were well expressed by lohn of Salisbury in 1159.101... 

Lucas, E. Marx und Engels Auseinandersetzung mit Darwin. International Review Social History yUyhq), 433-69. 

Ideology is a lazy method of dealing with complex social problems. It s a method that allows us to do hardly more than fool ourselves. I ve tried to lay out in this chapter how the impact of culture on fetal development can produce cycles of poverty, cycles of misery, the shackling of large numbers of people by the chains of circumstance. More than 160 years ago, Charles Darwin gave us a single sentence to clarify the issue 85 If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin. ... 

In 2008, the journal Medical Hypotheses published an editorial announcing that genetic evidence exists that criminality is inherited.90 But despite the claim, no genetic evidence was presented, only genetic rhetoric. Completely serious, the editorial states Rather surprisingly, despite the Darwinian and the Scientific Revolution, most intellectuals and even many scientists are still reluctant to accept some inescapable social implications of Darwin s theory of evolution. ... 

Underlying the myth of innate criminality is another myth about the innateness of social feelings and the moral sense. For example, in Charles Darwin s The Descent of Man (1879), his account of human evolution and the evolution of human behavior,103 he postulated human morality as an evolved (and therefore inherited) trait. As evidence he presented rhetoric rather than science—and page after page of silly anthropomorphism It is certain that associated animals have a feeling of love for each other, which is not felt by non-social adult animals. 104 For humans... 

Since the time of Darwin, many have believed that moral and social instincts are irmate and are modified by life experiences. The struggle is to embrace societal advances without abandoning morality. For example, humans are motivated to give aid to their fellow man. Their desire for praise or blame is acquired. Sympathy is innate and is strengthened by exercise and habit. The moral nature of man evolved with his intellect and then was strongly influenced by habit, example, instruction, and reflection. Virtuous tendencies are inherited and reinforced by cultural and societal praise or blame. 

It has been known for many decades that odors influence animal behavior, including foraging, predator avoidance, alarm response, social dominance, cohort recognition, and courtship. Darwin (1871) initially proposed chemical signals as a key mechanism in mate choice by which sexual selection is promoted. However, it was not until the discovery of the silkworm moth pheromone bombykol by Butenandt et al. (1959)... 

Cutaneous scent glands have been described for a wide taxonomic range of mammalian species, including the Marsupialia (for reviews, see Strauss and Ebling, 1970 Eisenberg and Kleiman, 1972 Thiessen and Rice, 1976 Stoddart, 1980 Muller-Schwarze, 1983). Pronounced sexual dimorphism of skin glands is a strong indication that their secretions are involved in social communication and, hence, are of evolutionary importance (Darwin, 1874 Thiessen and Rice, 1976 Blaustein, 1981). 

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