DARWINISM

Darwinism

Darwinism

Social Darwinism is a philosophical, economic, social, and scientific movement that claims that the way society purpose is, and ought to be, a reflection of the methods and movements of biological evolution. The word is generally applied to thinkers from around 1850 to the end of the nineteenth century, although the term itself was not popularized until the publication of Richard Hofstadter's Social Darwinism in American Thought in 1944. Despite the title's reference to Charles Darwin (1809-1882), most scholars think that his fellow English evolutionist Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) was a far more significant figure in Britain and America.

In the twenty-first ...