Charles Darwin's evolution by natural selection is the unifying theory of biology, with powerful explanatory value. Unfortunately, it was coopted soon after its debut in 1859. The problem is called social Darwinism.
Englishman Herbert Spencer had little formal schooling but claimed that societies evolve just like species in a “survival of the fittest.” He didn’t get that biological evolution operates without intent or progress. But by his reckoning, the poor deserve their fate, class hierarchies are natural, and social welfare is pointless. Under this view, says science historian Douglas Allchin, “[c]ompetition reigns unchecked. Individualism erodes any effort to cooperate [and] ethics and morality become irrelevant.
Social Darwinism quickly led to eugenics—a term coined by Darwin’s own cousin Francis Galton—calling for forced birth control on disfavored ethnic groups as well as poor whites, and for the wealthy to have more children. Global conferences drew wide press attention, and the veneer of scientific credibility held for decades. Of course Adolph Hitler used eugenics to justify breathing space for Germany in the lands of “mongrel” races. Years before Hitler took power, though, American Herbert Jennings exposed the falsified data of eugenic studies, which were simple lies.
When the Nazis went down in flames in 1945, they took social Darwinism with them. The Holocaust ended enthusiasm for eugenics in America and Britain, where it had won many adherents. Spencer’s was a warped social philosophy masquerading as science. Genetic studies show that human populations have little genetic diversity; individual differences swamp group differences.
Charles Darwin had nothing to do with social Darwinism. Unfortunately, his theory was hijacked to give racism credibility it never deserved.
I’m Jeff Gentry
Best reference:
Allchin, D. (2007). Social Un-Darwinism: How Does Society Relate to Nature in an Evolutionary Perspective? The American Biology Teacher, 69(2), 113–115. https://doi.org/10.2307/4452108
Dumb Ideas that Changed the World copyright 2024 by Jeff Gentry. All rights reserved.
