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18 Oct 09

Fun and Games in Fantasyland

Daniel Dennett commentary on Fodor, “Against Darwinism” January 29, 2007

ase.tufts.edu/...fodorondarwinism3b.pdf - Preview

Fodor Dennett darwinism evolution natural-selection adaptationism

29 Aug 09

Browne on Social Darwinism

Janet Browne: Darwin's Origin of Species, A Biography
New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2006.
[excerpt]

www.laurenhasten.com/browne.htm - Preview

social-darwinism evolution 150 Darwin darwinism

a struggle for existence among nations and races
the notorious doctrine of 'social Darwinism' took
the idea of success to justify social and economic policies in which struggle
was the driving force
12 more annotations...
- more closely connected with Herbert Spencer's pervasive social
  evolutionism. Spencer's nostrum of "survival of the fittest" was well
  suited to describe economic expansion, rapid adaptation to circumstance and
  colonization
- legitimize the competition that flourished
  in free-enterprise Victorian capitalism
- These commitments were heavily biased towards the political right.
  Few such thinkers believed in socialism or state support for the poor. A welfare
  state or subsidized industry, it was assumed, would encourage idleness and permit
  an increasing number of "unfit" people or firms to survive, thereby
  undermining economic and social progress and national health -- an obvious resurgence
  of Malthus's original ideas, now poured back into economic thought with a fully
  "scientific" backing provided by Darwin.
- A fairly typical view was expressed by Karl Pearson
  (1857-1936), the committed Darwinian biologist and London statistician. No one
  should regret, he said in 1900, that "a capable and stalwart race of white
  men should replace a dark-skinned tribe which can neither utilize its land for
  the full benefit of mankind, nor contribute its quota to the common stock of
  human knowledge."
- Eugenics was given its name and leading principles by Francis
  Galton in the 1880s
- The human race would deteriorate, he declared, unless policies were
  introduced to reduce breeding rates among what he categorized as the poorer,
  unfit, profligate elements of society and promote higher rates among the worthy
  middle classes.
- Whereas in Darwin's
  day eugenics was mainly expressed in fears about the maintenance of biological
  fitness, in the early twentieth century it expanded through Europe and the Americas
  into significant political movements seeking to change government policy with
  public health measures for the masses, birth control and enforced restraint
  from breeding. At root, the old system of Malthusian checks that Darwin had
  applied to biology was reapplied to political economies with compelling biological
  support. The poor, the deranged, the weak and diseased came to be regarded as
  biological burdens on society. For the good of the nation, it was said, policies
  should be introduced to prevent them from reproducing their kind.
- criminologists
  such as the Italian writer Cesare Lombroso proposed that there were physical
  stigmata to be seen in social deviants.
- unfit individuals could be identified by "signs" and then
  removed from society.
- he first task was to identify those who should not reproduce. Hereditary forms
  of mental disorder became the main target.
- the
  study of human evolution into a science of racial fixity that legitimized contemporary
  prejudices
- precipitated academic
  warfare between social scientists and biologists, the former favouring cultural
  explanations of racial differences, the latter inbuilt physical and biological
  parameters.

24 Aug 09

Of Darwinism and Social Darwinism

"The only consistency between the right’s attack on Darwinism and embrace of social Darwinism is the utter fatuousness of both. " (Reich)

www.commondreams.org/...1129-28.htm - Preview

darwinism social-darwinism 150

Herbert Spencer [Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]

www.iep.utm.edu/spencer.htm - Preview

spencer darwinism social-darwinism 150

30 Jul 09

Samuel Wilberforce: On Darwin's Origin of Species, 1860

www.fordham.edu/...1860wilberforce-darwin.html - Preview

Darwinism evolution

21 Jan 09

Evolution and Philosophy: Social Darwinism

"Another such view is 'Social Darwinism', which holds that social policy should allow the weak and unfit to fail and die, and that this is not only good policy but morally right."

www.talkorigins.org/...social.html - Preview

social-darwinism darwinism 150

14 Jan 09

Seed: Extending Darwinism

www.seedmagazine.com/...extending_darwinism.php - Preview

darwinism evolution epigenetics

07 Aug 08

Too Awful to Read? Susam Jacoby on Herbert Spencer

"I don't know what it is about Herbert Spencer that brings out the worst in cultural historians; but the tendency to recycle the same bizarre, age-old smears against him, without ever checking the facts, remains firmly entrenched. Spencer, it seems, is a ready-made scapegoat, attacked because others have made it fashionable to attack him; and few bother to read what the man actually wrote, because "everybody knows" that his ideas, whatever they were, were inhuman and worthless. " by Roderick T. Long

www.lewrockwell.com/...long10.html - Preview

darwinism Spencer social-darwinism

The Unfortunate Case of Herbert Spencer: How a libertarian individualist was recast as a social Darwinist

"A hit upon publication, the book helped make Hofstadter's name, doing much to secure him his prominent perch at Columbia University, where he taught until his death in 1970. But there's a problem with Hofstadter's celebrated work: His claims bear almost no resemblance to the real Herbert Spencer." (Reason Magazine)

reason.com/127794.html - Preview

darwinism social-darwinism Spencer