essay on social darwinism

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Course: US history   >   Unit 6

• Introduction to the Gilded Age
• The Gilded Age and the Second Industrial Revolution
• What was the Gilded Age?

Social Darwinism in the Gilded Age

• Misunderstanding evolution: a biologist's perspective on Social Darwinism
• Misunderstanding evolution: a historian's perspective on Social Darwinism
• America moves to the city
• Development of the middle class
• Politics in the Gilded Age
• Gilded Age politics: patronage
• Laissez-faire policies in the Gilded Age
• The Knights of Labor
• Labor battles in the Gilded Age
• The Populists
• Immigration and migration in the Gilded Age
• Continuity and change in the Gilded Age
• The Gilded Age

• Social Darwinism is a term scholars use to describe the practice of misapplying the biological evolutionary language of Charles Darwin to politics, the economy, and society.
• Many Social Darwinists embraced laissez-faire capitalism and racism. They believed that government should not interfere in the “survival of the fittest” by helping the poor, and promoted the idea that some races are biologically superior to others.
• The ideas of Social Darwinism pervaded many aspects of American society in the Gilded Age , including policies that affected immigration, imperialism, and public health.

Charles Darwin

Social darwinism, social darwinism, poverty, and eugenics, social darwinism, immigration, and imperialism, what do you think.

• See Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species (London: John Murray, 1859).
• For more on Social Darwinism see Richard Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American Thought (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1944); Carl N. Degler, In Search of Human Nature: The Decline and Revival of Darwinism in American Social Thought (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).
• Herbert Spencer, The Man Versus the State (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1981), 110.
• For more on eugenics in the United States, see Paul A. Lombardo, A Century of Eugenics in America: From the Indiana Experiment to the Human Genome Era (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011).
• See Daniel J. Tichenor, Dividing Lines: The Politics of Immigration Control in America (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2002).

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Social Darwinism

By: History.com Editors

Updated: August 21, 2018 | Original: April 6, 2018

Social Darwinism is a loose set of ideologies that emerged in the late 1800s in which Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection was used to justify certain political, social, or economic views. Social Darwinists believe in “survival of the fittest”—the idea that certain people become powerful in society because they are innately better. Social Darwinism has been used to justify imperialism, racism, eugenics and social inequality at various times over the past century and a half.

Evolution and Natural Selection

According to Darwin’s theory of evolution, only the plants and animals best adapted to their environment will survive to reproduce and transfer their genes to the next generation. Animals and plants that are poorly adapted to their environment will not survive to reproduce.

Charles Darwin published his notions on natural selection and the theory of evolution in his influential 1859 book On the Origin of Species .

Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection was a scientific theory focused on explaining his observations about biological diversity and why different species of plants and animals look different.

Herbert Spencer

Yet in an attempt to convey his scientific ideas to the British public, Darwin borrowed popular concepts, including “survival of the fittest,” from sociologist Herbert Spencer and “struggle for existence” from economist Thomas Malthus, who had earlier written about how human societies evolve over time.

Darwin rarely commented on the social implications of his theories. But to those who followed Spencer and Malthus, Darwin’s theory appeared to be confirming with science what they already believed to be true about human society—that the fit inherited qualities such as industriousness and the ability to accumulate wealth, while the unfit were innately lazy and stupid.

Survival of the Fittest and Laissez-Faire Capitalism

After Darwin published his theories on biological evolution and natural selection, Herbert Spencer drew further parallels between his economic theories and Darwin’s scientific principles.

Spencer applied the idea of “survival of the fittest” to so-called laissez faire or unrestrained capitalism during the Industrial Revolution , in which businesses are allowed to operate with little regulation from the government.

Unlike Darwin, Spencer believed that people could genetically pass learned qualities, such as frugality and morality, on to their children.

Spencer opposed any laws that helped workers, the poor, and those he deemed genetically weak. Such laws, he argued, would go against the evolution of civilization by delaying the extinction of the “unfit.”

Another prominent Social Darwinist was American economist William Graham Sumner. He was an early opponent of the welfare state. He viewed individual competition for property and social status as a tool for eliminating the weak and immoral of the population.

As social Darwinist rationalizations of inequality gained popularity in the late 1800s, British scholar Sir Francis Galton (a half-cousin of Darwin) launched a new “science” aimed at improving the human race by ridding society of its “undesirables.” He called it eugenics.

Galton proposed to better humankind by propagating the British elite. He argued that social institutions such as welfare and mental asylums allowed inferior humans to survive and reproduce at higher levels than their superior counterparts in Britain’s wealthy class.

Galton’s ideas never really took hold in his country, but they became popular in America where the concepts of eugenics quickly gained strength.

Eugenics became a popular social movement in the United States that peaked in the 1920s and 1930s. Books and films promoted eugenics, while local fairs and exhibitions held “fitter family” and “better baby” competitions around the country.

The eugenics movement in the United States focused on eliminating undesirable traits from the population. Proponents of the eugenics movement reasoned the best way to do this was by preventing “unfit” individuals from having children.

During the first part of the twentieth century, 32 U.S. states passed laws that resulted in the forced sterilization of more than 64,000 Americans including immigrants, people of color, unmarried mothers and the mentally ill.

Nazi Germany

Adolf Hitler , one of the world’s most notorious eugenicists, drew inspiration from California’s forced sterilizations of the “feeble-minded” in designing Nazi Germany’s racially based policies.

Hitler began reading about eugenics and social Darwinism while he was imprisoned following a failed 1924 coup attempt known as the Beer Hall Putsch .

Hitler adopted the social Darwinist take on survival of the fittest. He believed the German master race had grown weak due to the influence of non-Aryans in Germany. To Hitler, survival of the German “Aryan” race depended on its ability to maintain the purity of its gene pool.

The Nazis targeted certain groups or races that they considered biologically inferior for extermination. These included Jews, Roma (gypsies), Poles, Soviets, people with disabilities and homosexuals.

By the end of World War II , social Darwinist and eugenic theories had fallen out of favor in the United States and much of Europe—partly due to their associations with Nazi programs and propaganda, and because these theories were scientifically unfounded.

Social Darwinism; American Museum of Natural History . America’s Hidden History: The Eugenics Movement; Nature . September 18, 2014. In the Name of Darwin; PBS . Victims of the Nazi Era: Nazi Racial Ideology; United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

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Social Darwinism Theory: Definition & Examples

Charlotte Nickerson

Research Assistant at Harvard University

Undergraduate at Harvard University

Charlotte Nickerson is a student at Harvard University obsessed with the intersection of mental health, productivity, and design.

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On This Page:

• Social Darwinism refers to a set of theories and social practices that apply Darwin’s natural selection to other domains, notably the development of societies.
• There are two notable early theories of social Darwinism: Spencerism and Taylorism.
• Spencer aimed to explain the persistence of inequality by theorizing that humans adapt to their sociological circumstances.
• Coining the term “survival of the fittest,” Spencer believed that successful individuals (those who acquire wealth and status) pass their predisposition for success to their children. The cycle continues, and the most successful become more successful, while — in an “ideal” society — the least successful die off.
• Tylor, meanwhile, used social Darwinism to describe the development of societies on a meta scale. He believed that all humans shared a culture, and that societies advanced linearly. Cultural differences, in his view, are the result of some societies being less “advanced” than others.
• Social Darwinism has been heavily criticized and widely rejected by the scientific community for its lack of adherence to Darwinism, as well as in its use in justifying social inequality, imperialism, and eugenics. Nonetheless, social Darwinistic beliefs still persist in public conscience.

What is Social Darwinism?

Social Darwinism is a set of theories and societal practices that apply Darwin’s biological concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest to sociology, economics, and politics.

Darwin’s natural selection modeled the work of many thinkers in the late 19th century.

Many scientists during that period, as well as geographers, described themselves as Darwinian despite displaying the influence of a number of biological evolutionary theories, such as Lamarckism, which emphasized the linear progression of a species.

Sociocultural evolutionary theories developed in parallel to biological theories of evolution rather than emerging from them (Winlow, 2009).

Because social Darwinism conglomerates a large number of theories that often hold little-to-no resemblance to Darwinism, scholars question whether the label refers to an actual social movement or is merely one created by historians.

Over the course of the 20th century, Social Darwinism took up negative connotations as it became associated with racism, Nazism, and eugenics (Winlow, 2009).

Principles of Social Darwinism

Social Darwinist theories and the actions that used them as justifications share a few themes in common. These are:

The belief is that humans, like plants and animals, compete in a struggle for existence. The result is the “survival of the fittest;”

The belief that governments should not interfere with human competition by attempting to regulate the economy or cure social problems such as poverty;

Advocating for a laissez-faire political and economic system favoring competition and self-interest in social and business affairs; and,

A justification for the imbalances of power between individuals, races, and nations.

Rather than arguing that the whole human species evolved over time socially, social Darwinism argues that only certain groups of people did.

Thus, some groups of people, in the view of social Darwinistic theories, are superior to others.

Forms of Social Darwinism

Herbert spencer’s social darwinism.

Spencerianism is the set of theories most commonly associated with social Darwinism, despite the fact that it was primarily influenced by Lamarckian, rather than Darwinian, evolution (Winlow, 2009).

Spencer published the book Social Statistics (2021), in which he integrated Lamarck’s ideas around a progressive change in species with laissez-faire economics and developed the metaphor of the social organism.

He used this synthesis of biological, psychological, and social evolution to describe the origin of racial difference, to account for deviations from Lamarck’s one-line sequence of development, and to explain the evolution of high-level brain functioning.

Spencer reasoned that humans adapt to changes in their physical environment through cultural rather than biological adaptation. In doing so, Spencer coined the term “survival of the fittest,” which later became linked to Darwinism.

According to Spencer, those who are most successful at adapting to a changing cultural environment are those most likely to enjoy societal success in the form of status and resources.

These successful individuals pass on their culturally-adaptive advantages to their offspring. Because these people’s offspring enjoy the luxury of a more advantageous position in society, they are in an even better position to evolve further on the socioeconomic ladder.

Spencer argued that this process of cultural evolution was a process that could not be stopped (Delaney, 2009).

In his book (1851), Spencer concluded that the evolution of any human society is a matter of “survival of the fittest.” As evolutionary processes filter out the unfit, the outcome is a more advanced society.

According to Spencer, society exists solely for the benefit of the individual and emerges in response to the social and natural environment. Civilization is a process by which humans adjust to an increasingly complex social environment.

Because the results of interfering with the natural social order cannot be predicted, government intervention could distort the natural and necessary adaptation of society to its environment.

Thus, according to Spencer, governments should not intervene in social problems. Spencer criticized government attempts to regulate levies and opposed subsidies for education and housing.

Additionally, Spencer believed that businesses and institutions that could not adapt to the social environment were unfit for survival.

The government’s support of poorly functioning people, groups, organizations, and institutions allows weak institutions to endure, weakening society. Survival of the fittest, meanwhile, was a honing tool that societies could use to achieve perfection over time.

Spencer also opposed social welfare, believing it to lead to tyrannical and militant social order that entered with natural selection and degraded the species.

In a world without assistance for the poor, the least intelligent could die off, leading to rising levels of general intelligence.

Edward Burnett Tylor’s Cultural Evolutionary Theory

Edward Burnett Tylor’s cultural evolutionary theory also stressed that cultures develop linearly.

Tylor argued that the similarities between cultures in different areas of the world could be explained by independent invention; cultures were forced into developing in parallel ways because they needed to follow a hierarchy of cultural stages.

Edward Burnett Tylor’s so-called science of culture had three premises: the existence of one culture, its development through one progression, and humanity as united by one mind.

In Tylor’s view, all societies were essentially alike. Thus, according to Tylor, societies could be ranked by their different levels of cultural advancement, and less advanced societies provided hints as to what earlier human development looked like (Tremlett, Harvey, & Sutherland, 2017).

Tylor emphasized the earliest stage of “savagery.” The progression from savage to civilized, in Taylor’s view, did not occur evenly or at the same pace in every society; however, the distinct stages were always the same.

Tylor held that the progress of culture entailed a slow replacement of magical thinking with the power of reason. Savage societies, according to Tylor, had global supernaturalism.

This global supernaturalism remained in the barbaric stage with the development of language, laws, and institutions.

Finally, in advanced civilizations, such as Tylor’s own Victorian society, reason and scientific thinking predominate (Tremlett, Harvey, & Sutherland, 2017).

Controversies and Criticism

Evolutionary anthropology came under fire in its early days. The most notable early criticism of social Darwinism came from the German-American anthropologist Franz Boas.

Boas challenged Tylor’s notions that human culture was universal and that this explained the independent invention of different societal structures (Halliday, 1971).

Social Darwinism has also been commonly criticized for its misreading of the ideas first described in Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species.

One element of this criticism regards the evolutionarily short time scales under which the societal changes seen in social Darwinism supposedly take place.

While evolutionarily change takes place over many, many generations, social Darwinism change supposedly happens over a much shorter time period.

Many have called social Darwinism a misnomer in that its two originating theorists — Spencer and Tylor — take more influence from discredited Lamarckian ideas of evolution than Darwinian ones.

In essence, Spencer and Tylor both assumed that sociocultural characteristics acquired over a lifetime could be passed onto offspring, while Darwinism believes that only genetic characteristics can (Halliday, 1971).

Social Darwinism lost favor after the Second World War and the subsequent crash of eugenicist regimes.

For this reason, the field carries the connotation of a justification for forced sterilization and a number of policies leading to the deaths and domination of many from groups determined to be “inferior.”

Examples of Implications

Eugenics is the theory and practice involving the belief that control of reproduction can improve human heredity.

Although the concept dates to at least the ancient Greeks, the modern eugenics movement arose in the 19th century when Galton (1883) applied his cousin Charles Darwin’s theories to humans.

Galton believed that, by being cognisant of more suitable human characteristics, the human race could progress more speedily in its development than it otherwise would have.

While some forms of eugenics promote breeding by those, who have “superior” genetic qualities, “negative” eugenics determines breeding by those with perceived physical, mental, or moral defects (Paul, 2001).

Eugenics, in practice, was largely influenced by the principles of Social Darwinism, particularly in justifications for sterilizing those who came from “inferior” social positions.

In Germany, the Nazi government passed a law that enforced compulsory sterilization from a wide range of ostensibly genetic conditions. This law was praised by a number of non-German commentators (Bock, 2013).

Imperialism

Social Darwinism was also used as a justification for imperialism in the 19th and 20th centuries. During this time, the British Empire, in particular, controlled large portions of the globe and exerted dominion over the conquered peoples of their territories.

In order to justify their control of colonial populations, Europeans had stated that the colonial population was subhuman, therefore needing to be controlled by the more intelligent Europeans.

The work of Charles Darwin and Henry Lamarck — and the sociocultural theorists such as Spencer and Tylor, who extrapolated upon it — became a scientific explanation for the dominance of Europeans.

This provided a moral and rational justification for continued dominion (Koch, 1984).

Social Inequality

Social Darwinism has also played a large control in justifying various social inequalities from the 19th century to the present (Rudman & Saud, 2020).

Spencer (2021), for example, justified laissez-faire capitalism by arguing that the wealthy were biologically and socially superior to the lower class and that this superiority was heritable.

Some, such as Rudman and Saud (2020), have argued that certain modern social phenomena — such as justifications for police brutality and support for reducing social safety nets — are motivated by Social Darwinism.

In doing so, the researchers conducted two studies. In each of these studies, participants filled out a scale measuring the extent to which they believed that a person’s traits and abilities are ingrained in their race or economic status and the extent to which they can be changed.

Rudman Saud considered those who scored high on these scales to be high in essentialism.

In both studies, Rudman and Saud (2020) found that those who had beliefs aligning with social Darwinism were more likely to justify police brutality and support the reduction of social safety nets.

Bock, G. (2013). Antinatalism, maternity and paternity in National Socialist racism (pp. 122-152). Routledge.

Delaney, T. (2009). Social spencerism. Philosophy Now, 71, 20-21.

Galton, F. (1883). Inquiries into human faculty and its development. Macmillan.

Halliday, R. J. (1971). Social Darwinism: a definition. Victorian Studies, 14(4), 389-405.

Koch, H. W. (1984). Social Darwinism as a Factor in the ‘New Imperialism’. In The Origins of the First World War (pp. 319-342). Palgrave, London.

Paul, D. B. (2003). Darwin, social Darwinism and eugenics. The Cambridge Companion to Darwin, 214(10.1017).

Rudman, L. A., & Saud, L. H. (2020). Justifying social inequalities: The role of social Darwinism. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 46(7), 1139-1155.

Spencer, H., & Taylor, M. (2021). Social statics. Routledge.

Tremlett, P. F., Harvey, G., & Sutherland, L. T. (Eds.). (2017). Edward Burnett Tylor, religion and culture. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Winlow, H. (2009). Darwinism (and Social Darwinism). International Encyclopedia of Human Geography.

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78 Social Darwinism Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best social darwinism topic ideas & essay examples, 📌 good essay topics on social darwinism, 🔎 simple & easy social darwinism essay titles, ❓ questions about social darwinism.

• Why Did the Ideas of Social Darwinism Appeal to Many Americans in the Late 19th Century? In order to answer this question, it is necessary to clear up what the main idea of Social Darwinism was and what the peculiarities of the Americans in the 19th century were.
• Social Darwinism in European Imperialism Darwinism, in general, is a biological theory describing the appearance of new species and extinction of the existing ones defining species through the process of natural selection1 that is the core of Darwin’s theory and […]
• Social Darwinism and the Success or Failures of Individuals in the Society According to Darwin, while the fittest survive in nature, in human society such fitness is determined by the ability of people to adjust to the changing circumstances.
• Social Darwinism: Evolutionary Explanations in Sociology In order to understand the reasons behind the failure of social Darwinism to describe society objectively, it is essential to review this ideology’s common arguments.
• Social Darwinism and Legality of Panhandling It is impossible to judge the value of panhandlers’ life; however, panhandling should be outlawed to give people an opportunity to live a decent life.
• Impact of Social Darwinism on the Perception of Human Disabilities In addition, connecting behavior such as the likeliness of criminality to genetics is incorrect and damaging not only to the individual but to a community and society as a whole.
• Social Darwinism in “Battle Royal” by Ralph Ellison The Battle Royal is a non-fictional work of Ralph Ellison and talks of the black people fighting for their freedom in the Whites’ society. Furthermore, a good life is also embedded in hard work and […]
• Scientific Racism: the Eugenics of Social Darwinism I think that the development of Scientific Racism and further Eugenics became the result of people’s attempts to justify their unethical behavior toward other individuals and to support their material goals to develop slavery, and […]
• Social Darwinism and the Mixing of the Races All of his heinous acts at the time was meant to highlight the weakness of a particular race of people, in this case, the Jews, and how allowing them to continue to lay claim to […]
• Social Darwinism and Nazi Genocide Ideology It is possible to trace the way the Jews settled and assimilated in western countries and the way the ideas of Social Darwinism affected the society to see the link between Nazi genocidal ideology and […]
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106 Social Darwinism Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

Inside This Article

Social Darwinism is a concept that emerged in the late 19th century, inspired by Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection. It is the belief that society operates on the same principles as evolution, with only the fittest individuals surviving and thriving. This idea has been highly controversial and has been used to justify various social inequalities and injustices. If you are studying social Darwinism and need essay topic ideas, here are 106 suggestions to get you started:

• The origins and history of social Darwinism
• The key principles of social Darwinism
• The impact of social Darwinism on society
• The role of Herbert Spencer in developing social Darwinism
• The relationship between social Darwinism and eugenics
• The influence of social Darwinism on Nazi ideology
• The ethical implications of social Darwinism
• The criticisms of social Darwinism
• The connections between social Darwinism and imperialism
• The role of race in social Darwinist thinking
• The impact of social Darwinism on colonialism
• The impact of social Darwinism on indigenous populations
• The role of gender in social Darwinist ideology
• The impact of social Darwinism on labor relations
• The influence of social Darwinism on education
• The role of social Darwinism in shaping government policies
• The impact of social Darwinism on the criminal justice system
• The connection between social Darwinism and capitalism
• The impact of social Darwinism on social welfare programs
• The relationship between social Darwinism and social inequality
• The influence of social Darwinism on public health policies
• The impact of social Darwinism on environmental conservation efforts
• The role of social Darwinism in shaping public attitudes towards poverty
• The impact of social Darwinism on immigration policies
• The connection between social Darwinism and globalization
• The influence of social Darwinism on social movements
• The role of social Darwinism in shaping scientific research
• The impact of social Darwinism on healthcare policies
• The connection between social Darwinism and social mobility
• The influence of social Darwinism on social welfare programs
• The role of social Darwinism in shaping public attitudes towards disability
• The impact of social Darwinism on education policies
• The connection between social Darwinism and social justice movements
• The influence of social Darwinism on social media
• The role of social Darwinism in shaping public attitudes towards mental health
• The impact of social Darwinism on housing policies
• The connection between social Darwinism and social isolation
• The influence of social Darwinism on social networking
• The role of social Darwinism in shaping public attitudes towards addiction
• The impact of social Darwinism on social support systems
• The connection between social Darwinism and social cohesion
• The influence of social Darwinism on social norms
• The role of social Darwinism in shaping public attitudes towards aging
• The impact of social Darwinism on social exclusion
• The connection between social Darwinism and social integration
• The influence of social Darwinism on social sustainability
• The role of social Darwinism in shaping public attitudes towards diversity
• The impact of social Darwinism on social cohesion
• The connection between social Darwinism and social responsibility
• The influence of social Darwinism on social inclusion
• The role of social Darwinism in shaping public attitudes towards justice
• The connection between social Darwinism and social harmony
• The influence of social Darwinism on social empowerment
• The role of social Darwinism in shaping public attitudes towards equality
• The impact of social Darwinism on social fragmentation
• The connection between social Darwinism and social development
• The influence of social Darwinism on social activism
• The role of social Darwinism in shaping public attitudes towards democracy
• The impact of social Darwinism on social polarization
• The connection between social Darwinism and social progress
• The influence of social Darwinism on social cohesion
• The role of social Darwinism in shaping public attitudes towards citizenship
• The impact of social Darwinism on social integration
• The connection between social Darwinism and social capital
• The role of social Darwinism in shaping public attitudes towards community
• The connection between social Darwinism and social engagement
• The influence of social Darwinism on social responsibility
• The connection between social Darwinism and social sustainability

These essay topic ideas provide a wide range of opportunities to explore the complex and controversial concept of social Darwinism. Whether you are examining its historical roots, its impact on society, or its ethical implications, there is plenty of material to delve into. Good luck with your research and writing!

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William graham sumner on social darwinism (ca.1880s).

William Graham Sumner, a sociologist at Yale University, penned several pieces associated with the philosophy of Social Darwinism. In the following, Sumner explains his vision of nature and liberty in a just society.

The struggle for existence is aimed against nature. It is from her niggardly hand that we have to wrest the satisfaction for our needs, but our fellow-men are our competitors for the meager supply. Competition, therefore, is a law of nature. Nature is entirely neutral; she submits to him who most energetically and resolutely assails her. She grants her rewards to the fittest, therefore, without regard to other considerations of any kind. If, then, there be liberty, men get from her just in proportion to their works, and their having and enjoying are just in proportion to their being and their doing. Such is the system of nature. If we do not like it, and if we try to amend it, there is only one way in which we can do it. We can take from the better and give to the worse. We can deflect the penalties of those who have done ill and throw them on those who have done better. We can take the rewards from those who have done better and give them to those who have done worse. We shall thus lessen the inequalities. We shall favor the survival of the unfittest, and we shall accomplish this by destroying liberty. Let it be understood that we cannot go outside of this alternative; liberty, inequality, survival of the fittest; not-liberty, equality, survival of the unfittest. The former carries society forward and favors all its best members; the latter carries society downwards and favors all its worst members.

For three hundred years now men have been trying to understand and realize liberty. … What we mean by liberty is civil liberty, or liberty under law; and this means the guarantees of law that a man shall not be interfered with while using his own powers for his own welfare. It is, therefore, a civil and political status; and that nation has the freest institutions in which the guarantees of peace for the laborer and security for the capitalist are the highest. Liberty, therefore, does not by any means do away with the struggle for existence. We might as well try to do away with the need of eating, for that would, in effect, be the same thing. What civil liberty does is to turn the competition of man with man from violence and brute force into an industrial competition under which men vie with one another for the acquisition of material goods by industry, energy, skill, frugality, prudence, temperance, and other industrial virtues. Under this changed order of things the inequalities are not done away with. Nature still grants her rewards of having and enjoying, according to our being and doing, but it is now the man of the highest training and not the man of the heaviest fist who gains the highest reward. It is impossible that the man with capital and the man without capital should be equal. To affirm that they are equal would be to say that a man who has no tool can get as much food out of the ground as the man who has a spade or a plough; or that the man who has no weapon can defend himself as well against hostile beasts or hostile men as the man who has a weapon. If that were so, none of us would work any more. We work and deny ourselves to get capital just because, other things being equal, the man who has it is superior, for attaining all the ends of life, to the man who has it not. Considering the eagerness with which we all seek capital and the estimate we put upon it, either in cherishing it if we have it, or envying others who have it while we have it not, it is very strange what platitudes pass current about it in our society so soon as we begin to generalize about it. If our young people really believed some of the teachings they hear, it would not be amiss to preach them a sermon once in a while to reassure them, setting forth that it is not wicked to be rich, nay even, that it is not wicked to be richer than your neighbor.

It follows from what we have observed that it is the utmost folly to denounce capital. To do so is to under- mine civilization, for capital is the first requisite of every social gain, educational, ecclesiastical, political, aesthetic, or other.

Source: William Graham Sumner, The Challenge of Facts and Other Essays, edited by Albert Galloway Keller (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1914).

Social Darwinism Revisited: How four critics altered the meaning of a near-obsolete term, greatly increased its usage, and thereby changed social science

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• Published: 13 May 2024

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• Geoffrey M. Hodgson   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-5823-3996 1  

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Many social scientists still resist Darwinian insights. A possible reason for this is a fear of being associated with Social Darwinism. This article updates a 2002 search for appearances of Social Darwinism in articles and reviews on the JSTOR database. This database has since increased substantially in size, and it now includes far more publications in languages other than English. Use of the term Social Darwinism was rare before the 1940s. Talcott Parsons used it in 1932 to criticise the analytic use of the core Darwinian concepts in social science. Subsequently, and for the first time, Herbert Spencer and Willam Graham Sumner were described as Social Darwinists. This led to a major change of meaning of the term, where it was associated more, but not entirely, with free market individualism. With this reconstructed meaning, a 1944 bestselling book by Richard Hofstadter provoked an explosion of usage of the term in postwar years. The continuing use of the term is partly ideologically motivated and has served to deter consideration of Darwinian ideas in social science.

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1 Introduction

With notable exceptions, Darwinism is still resisted in much of social science. Footnote 1 There are several possible reasons for this, including appropriate scholarly reservations about the application of ideas of biological origin to social phenomena. However, such legitimate concerns are sometimes difficult to debate in a measured and informed way because of the widespread depiction of Darwinism by some social scientists as having reactionary, regressive, and even racist implications. Darwinism is thus avoided.

Related misgivings are found in evolutionary economics in the Schumpeterian tradition. Joseph Schumpeter avoided Darwinian concepts such as selection and wrote that for economists ‘no appeal to biology would be of the slightest use’ (Schumpeter 1954 , p. 789; Witt 2002 ). In their seminal work in this intellectual tradition, Richard Nelson and Sidney Winter ( 1982 ) actually deployed the core Darwinian concepts of variation, selection, and replication (of routines), but made no acknowledgement that these concepts were of Darwinian provenance. They mentioned Darwin only once in passing. Since this work and its massive influence, many evolutionary economists have been reluctant to make Darwinian ideas explicit. Footnote 2

Darwinian ideas are often covert. Consider two accounts of evolutionary approaches in economics and management by leading advocates. In Peter Murmann et al. ( 2003 ), Darwinism is mentioned only once, but the Darwinian concept of selection appears several times. In contrast, in the collection of essays edited by Richard Nelson et al. ( 2018 ), the concept of selection is mentioned merely as an aside, and it does not even appear in the index of the book. Given the prominence of the authors involved, these works suggest some reluctance to highlight or develop Darwinian ideas, despite their occasional employment. Footnote 3

It is not the purpose of this article to explore the pros or cons of adopting Darwinian ideas in evolutionary economics, or to consider reasons why social scientists are overly cautious about Darwinism. Except one. This is the possibility that caution about Darwinian ideas, in evolutionary economics and elsewhere, is motivated in part by worries of a backlash from critics of ‘Social Darwinism.’ The frequency and force of this motivation are difficult to assess empirically. However, there is enough anecdotal evidence to assume such concerns exist.

The aim here is not to rehabilitate or advocate any version of Social Darwinism. Instead, it is to reveal the mythology of Social Darwinism and to reduce inhibitions to more careful and well-grounded considerations of the value, or otherwise, of Darwinian ideas in the social sciences. Importantly, hardly anyone described their own views as ‘Social Darwinism’. Instead, it has been a label used by critics, but the objects of criticism are varied and have changed through time.

Many with worries that Darwinism may be dangerous for social science refer to ‘Social Darwinist’ ideas that grew up after the publication of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species in 1859. They cite nationalism, racism, and eugenics. Mike Hawkins ( 1997 , p. 282) even claimed that Adolf Hitler ‘showed a consistent adherence to the premises of Social Darwinism’. Such inflated accounts might suggest that Social Darwinism fuelled two world wars, stimulated Nazism and the Holocaust, and led to millions of deaths. No wonder Darwinism is verboten in parts of social science.

Since the 1940s, there has been an enhanced concern that ‘Social Darwinism’ implies individualism and competition, as well as other sins. Footnote 4 This narrative typically highlights Herbert Spencer and William Graham Sumner. Today, if we put the phrase ‘Social Darwinism’ into a Web search engine, then the name of Spencer appears in profusion. Spencer is regarded as the foremost ‘Social Darwinist’ and Sumner as his American deputy. There is no denying the impact of these two scholars. They were enormously influential in Anglo-American academia and beyond. The names of Spencer or Sumner are often cited, but their works are little read. In fact, neither Spencer nor Sumner used the term ‘Social Darwinism’. While they celebrated individualism and competition, they opposed nationalism, imperialism, and war. For reasons I raise below, the inclusion of Spencer and Sumner in the narrative on Social Darwinism can be challenged partly on the grounds that they were first included by its critics more than 60 years after the supposed emergence of Social Darwinism as a movement.

There is substantial literature that contests the standard story about ‘Social Darwinism’. ‘Revisionist’ scholars led by Robert Bannister ( 1979 ) pointed out that no group of thinkers labelling themselves as ‘Social Darwinists’ existed. There was no self-declared school promoting ‘Social Darwinism’. The label was almost universally used by critics to describe doctrinal opponents, of various kinds. Historical misrepresentations of basic facts, and the uncritical use of ‘Social Darwinism’ as a term of abuse, have served partisan political agendas, and have foreclosed scholarly discussion of the importance or otherwise of ideas from biology in helping to understand human behaviour and socio-economic evolution. Footnote 5

In 2004, I published a contribution to this debate (Hodgson 2004b ). I reported my 2002 searches for key terms related to ‘Social Darwinism’ in the large JSTOR database of academic journals and other relevant documents. Footnote 6 Apparently, this was the first time this database had been used to research Social Darwinism in this way. I concentrated on the history of the term and its meanings, rather than on the impact of Darwinism on social science and on political ideology. Both issues are important, but the second has received much more attention than the first. At that time, JSTOR had relatively little material in languages other than English. I confined my search to Anglophone journals. My main findings were as follows:

There were very few appearances of the terms ‘Social Darwinism’ or ‘Social Darwinist’ before 1930. My 2002 search found only 21 articles or reviews with appearances in over 77,000 items of relevance. While Darwin, Spencer and Sumner were all highly cited before 1930, the terms ‘Social Darwinism’ or ‘Social Darwinist’ were hardly ever used.

The only item found in the JSTOR database explicitly advocating ‘Social Darwinism’, in any sense whatsoever, was an early piece on eugenics by Colin Wells ( 1907 ), who also argued for a form of ‘individualism’. The American sociologist Lester F. Ward ( 1907 ) pointed out that Well’s usage of ‘Social Darwinism’ was different from that of others, who had mostly used the label in criticisms of racism or nationalism. Ward argued that racist views could not be legitimately derived from Darwinism.

The appearances up to 1939 largely involved critics of race struggle and belligerent nationalism. They accused others of ‘Social Darwinism’. Some of these early appearances are in reviews in English of books by Achille Loria ( 1895 , in Italian) and Jacques Novicow ( 1910 , in French). These volumes are critical of nationalism and racial conflict. After the outbreak of the First World War, two influential books in English by the US sociologist and pacifist George Nasmyth ( 1916 ) and the US philosopher Ralph Barton Perry ( 1918 ) saw nationalism, imperialism, and war as being aided by ‘Social Darwinism’. Perry further argued that theoretical intercourse between sociology and biology should be ended.

Following Perry and others who wanted to free social science from biology, Talcott Parsons gave the term ‘Social Darwinism’ new life and meaning. Parsons ( 1932 ) extended the usage of the term from its previous ideological associations with nationalism and racism to anyone who believed in ‘the application of Darwinian concepts of variation and selection to social evolution’. In this manner, Parsons helped to instigate the major revival and metamorphosis of the term ‘Social Darwinism’.

In strong contrast to prevailing accounts, neither Spencer nor Sumner were described as Social Darwinists before 1933. Sumner was first referred to as a Social Darwinist by Bernhard J. Stern ( 1933 ). Leo Rogin ( 1937 , p. 413) quoted the Soviet sociologist B. I. Smoulevitch ( 1936 , p. 95) who regarded Spencer as influenced by ‘Social Darwinism’. This gave the green light to others, eventually helping to transform the meaning of the term throughout Anglophone social science.

The leader of this transformation was the US historian Richard Hofstadter. He published an article entitled ‘William Graham Sumner, Social Darwinist’ (Hofstadter 1941 ). Therein he put Spencer in the same camp. Hofstadter’s ( 1944 ) Social Darwinism in American Thought transformed the discourse on the topic. Usage of the term ‘Social Darwinism’ (almost entirely by critics and rarely by proponents) increased exponentially in the literature.

Twenty years later, I repeated my explorations of the JSTOR database. Consequently, I can add some further arguments and reflections, and modify some aspects of my previous analysis. Four key players in the 1932–1944 period that I highlighted on my 2002 search, namely Hoftstadter, Parsons, Rogin and Stern, are shown in the present study to have an even more crucial role.

The JSTOR database has expanded considerably over 21 years. It now includes many more documents in languages other than English. It is no longer necessary to confine searches on this theme to English alone. These extended searches, particularly with French, Italian and German works included, enable us to find several more articles and reviews mentioning ‘Social Darwinism’ (as translated) up to 1939. In my 2002 search, I found 32 documents citing ‘Social Darwinism’ (in English) in this period. In 2023, I found 126 articles or reviews using the term up to 1939, a minority of which are in English. Although this is a substantial increase, it is miniscule in relation to the overall number of documents in the database in that period.

In 2002, I searched 502,411 ‘relevant’ articles or reviews in 1880–1989 inclusive. Footnote 7 In 2023, I searched 3,306,435 in the same period. This is more than a sixfold increase. Adding the 1870s, the 1990s, and the first decade of the new millennium, makes it more than an 11-fold increase. Repeating the search with a much larger database is a major test of my preceding analysis and assessment.

The multi-lingual search in 2023 did not undermine the principal conclusions of my preceding Anglophone study. ‘Social Darwinism’ was still a rare term, and almost always used in criticism. Reporting these new results is the first reason for my revisitation of this topic in this article. Not only is the database much larger, significantly more results are found in non-Anglophone territory.

The second reason for the present article is my growing concern that I had previously offered an inadequate explanation of the dramatic reinvention and re-entry of the term in the period from 1932 to 1944, and of its subsequent growth and persistence in usage. In this essay I have delved deeper. I offer some additional evidence and explanations. I revisit possible reasons for Parsons’s ( 1932 , 1937 ) view of Social Darwinism as (for him) a mistaken adoption of core Darwinian concepts in social science. I also explore the ideological and political context in which Stern and others paved the way for Hofstadter ( 1941 , 1944 ) to promote another new definition of Social Darwinism, which was different from Parsons’s, but it could complement and rest alongside it. These reconsiderations may help us understand the motives for continuing accusations and rebuttals of ‘Social Darwinism’ today.

The third reason concerns the methodology that was used in my 2004 article. Since then, I have come across other cases where researchers search for the appearance and usage of the terms in context, rather than starting with presupposed meanings and searching for them. This point may be of some relevance in studies of other key terms.

The rest of this article is structured as follows. Section two offers some brief reflections on the research methodology used in my JSTOR searches on this topic, in the light of two further instances by other authors since 2004. Section three looks at the period up to 1939, including appearances in the additional English and foreign language documents. Section four examines more closely the period from 1932 to 1944, focusing particularly on Parsons, Stern, Rogin and Hofstadter. The growth in usage of Social Darwinism in the second half of the 20th century forms the background of section five, which considers three selected exemplars – two from the 1950s and one from the 1990s – including what is possibly the most important postwar critical account of Social Darwinism (Hawkins 1997 ). Section six concludes the essay.

2 Should we search for a term, or for its imputed substance?

In 2002, I searched for the term ‘Social Darwinism’ (or ‘Social Darwinist’) rather than what might be imagined to be its meaning . Some critics suggested then that I should search for its presumed meaning(s) instead. My position, then as now, is that both approaches in the history of ideas are legitimate and useful. In Hodgson ( 2004b ), I cited an article by Matthias Klaes ( 2001 ) that offers some support for this inclusive stance.

At least in the case of Social Darwinism, there are serious problems with relying on searches for (attributed) meanings alone. As there was no school of self-proclaimed ‘Social Darwinists’ we must rely on how the term was used by its critics. My 2002 search found multiple conflicting meanings and emphases, with a new consensus arising in the 1940s, when the term became much more popular.

As criticisms of Social Darwinism continue to be published, a questionable procedure prevails in this genre. The researcher first assembles a set of traits that he or she considers to be the meaning of the term. These presumed traits might include nationalism, individualism, racism, eugenics, or whatever. With the presumed traits, a search is then conducted. Sure enough, we find what we are seeking. Writers are discovered who expressed nationalist, individualist, racist, eugenic, or other ideas. Or they use the selected catchphrases. These are labelled Social Darwinists, even if they did not use that term, or did not even mention Darwin.

There is no doubt that Darwin was influential. Hawkins ( 1997 , pp. 11–13) rightly pointed out that Darwinism inspired psychology and affected other behavioural sciences. He went further to argue that the influence of Darwinism shows that ‘Social Darwinism cannot be dismissed as marginal’. He also claimed that Darwinism does not have to be closely followed, or even acknowledged, for Social Darwinism to exist. Anyone affected by Darwinian ideas could be a Social Darwinist. And almost everyone was affected to some degree.

Hence, by such methods, we can conclude that Hitler was a Social Darwinist, although neither Darwin nor evolution is mentioned in Mein Kampf, and Hitler did not believe that human species evolved from apes (O’Connell and Ruse 2021 , p. 48). (His ideas on racial purity excluded the possibility of ape-like ancestors.) The wide application of the Social Darwinist label by Hawkins and others goes far beyond Nazism to include libertarian individualists, anti-nationalists and anti-militarists. Sumner is deemed a Social Darwinist, even though Sumner ( 1906 ) mentioned Darwin only once in his most important treatise. Sumner’s disciple Albert G. Keller ( 1923 , p. 137) remarked that his teacher ‘did not give much attention to the possibility of extending evolution into the societal field.’ Sumner is said to be a ‘Social Darwinist’ anyway. Spencer is convicted as well, while noting his coinage of the term ‘survival of the fittest’. The fact that Darwin adopted the term from Spencer is additional proof of Spencer’s guilt. By this method, we can often find the ‘world view’ or traits that we are looking for, but such an attempt to establish a meaning for Social Darwinism depends on partly arbitrary assumptions, picked in the present rather than carefully rooted in the past. With inadequate warrant for the chosen meaning, it depends on the presumptions of the researcher.

Jeffrey O’Connell and Michael Ruse ( 2021 ) used the same method of starting with a preconception of what Social Darwinism means. They added the stipulation that its exponents must believe in human evolution from primates, which ruled out Hitler, but not some other leading Nazis (pp. 48–50). They repeatedly used the phrase ‘traditional Social Darwinism’, as if its lineage were evident from the historical record. With whom did this tradition start? With Spencer of course. He sowed ‘the seeds of traditional social Darwinism’ (pp. 12–14), and these rapidly spread to American soil, with the ideas of academics such as William Graham Sumner and industrialists such as Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller. They also spread to Germany and inspired its military high command in the First World War (pp. 15–19). A problem neglected here is both Spencer and Sumner were strongly opposed to militarism, seeing it as a deadly extension of the power of the state, but that did not stop O’Connell and Ruse seeing ‘traditional social Darwinism’ as ‘triumphant’ in the early years of the 20th century. Another problem for them is that at the time of this triumph, neither Spencer nor Sumner had been described as Social Darwinists. That is unmentioned. Most primary uses of this relatively rare term were in writings in French or Italian. O’Connell and Ruse failed to cite these French and Italian sources. Yet it was in these languages that ‘Social Darwinism’ was then most used.

First take a preconception of what it means, and then find authors who fit. This method used alone, as employed by Hawkins, O’Connell, Ruse and others, constructs a history that is blinkered by contemporary concerns or prejudices. It has no answer to a rival retrospective attempt that might start from different preconceptions and then look back to find different thinkers. It simply finds instances that comply with its presumed ab initio search criteria.

Since 2004, the methodological argument against relying on presumption alone has been reinforced by searches for other key terms in the history of the social sciences. Consider the term ‘classical liberalism’. It is typically associated with early, free-market versions of liberalism, that understand liberty negatively as largely the absence of coercion, treat the individual as generally the best judge of his or her interests, emphasise rights over duties, under the guardianship of a minimal state. This account of ‘classical liberalism’ was promoted by writers such as Friedrich Hayek ( 1960 ), Milton Friedman ( 1955 ) and Ludwig Mises ([1927] 2005 ). They named early intellectuals who expressed such views, and they aligned themselves with this group. Other writers concur with this notion of ‘classical liberalism’, whether critical or otherwise of its substance.

As Helena Rosenblatt ( 2018 ) has shown, there are problems with this methodology. It paints the portrait before studying the fuller historical record. Given the scale and diversity of political and philosophical thought in the last three hundred years, it is quite conceivable that persons resembling the portrait can be found. However, problems are revealed if we choose a thinker such as Adam Smith, who is applauded by Hayek and others for his stress on individual incentives and markets. Other prominent features of his thought – including his extensive discussions of sympathy, justice, and moral sentiments – are given less emphasis, because they are absent from the preconceived portrait. This methodology, while it finds what it was seeking, becomes blind to much else. It has no answer to a rival retrospective attempt that might start from a different conception of ‘classical liberalism’ , and then look back to find thinkers that fit this different portrait.

Instead, Rosenblatt examined past usage of terms such as ‘liberal’ and ‘liberalism’ (and their equivalents in other languages). The views of writers who were the first to describe themselves politically as ‘liberals’ were often very different from the ‘classical liberalism’ described by Hayek, Friedman, and Mises. They stressed duties as well as rights. They rejected the notion that society could function wholly through self-interest. They warned of the dangers of selfishness. Most 19th-century liberals, whether British, French, or German, were not averse to government intervention. Her study dismantles the Hayek–Friedman–Mises historical mischaracterisation of ‘classical liberalism’.

The methodology of searching for a term, and then examining its usages and meanings, was also adopted by Taylor Boas and Jordan Gans-Morse ( 2009 ) in their study of the word ‘neoliberalism’. They found that it has been used in many ways. They produced bibliometric evidence revealing that relatively few authors attempted to define its meaning, even in academic publications. Even more than critics of ‘Social Darwinism’, critics of ‘neoliberalism’ lack consensus on what they are criticising. Searching for the usage of a term is again helpful and instructive.

3 Social Darwinism re-surveyed: 1877–1939

Hodgson ( 2004b ) claimed that that first appearance of the term ‘Social Darwinism’ was in an article by Oskar Schmidt ( 1879 ). The current JSTOR database contains an earlier mention by Fisher ( 1877 ). He discussed an analysis by Henry Maine and accused him of ‘Social Darwinism’. It is unclear what Fisher meant by this. More significantly, as I had found in 2002, in 1880 Émile Gautier published in Paris an anarchist tract entitled Le darwinisme social . Gautier argued that the true application of Darwinian principles to human society meant social cooperation rather than brutal competition. He used the term ‘Social Darwinism’ to criticize those who claimed to use Darwinian ideas to support capitalist competition and laissez faire. The term acquired other meanings, became established in France, and quickly spread to Italy (Clark 1985 ).

The 2023 JSTOR search, from 1877 to 1939 inclusive, found 126 articles or reviews using the term, only 37% of which are in English. Many of the items in English are reviews of French or Italian works that mention the term ‘Social Darwinism’. Such underlines the predominantly Continental European location of its usage before 1940, in languages other than English. This is another new result in the 2023 survey. Among the most influential were still Loria ( 1895 ) and Novicow ( 1910 ), who criticise nationalism, imperialist war, and race struggle. Although the 2023 search found additional references to ‘Social Darwinism’ in the 1920s and 1930s, they were still low in number. After rising to 23 in the first decade of the 20th century, non-Anglophone articles or reviews citing ‘Social Darwinism’ declined in number until the 1940s, reaching a low point of three in that decade. After its Continental heyday around the turn of the century, the enfeebled locus of criticism of ‘Social Darwinism’ shifted to the Anglophone world in the 1920s, but its progress there was at first extremely weak. There were 16 Anglophone articles or reviews citing ‘Social Darwinism’ in the 1920s and 14 in the 1930s. Despite its locational shift to (principally) the US, the global storyline about ‘Social Darwinism’ was in danger of petering out. The 2023 search confirms that the narrative was clearly in the doldrums. In English, French, German and Italian the term ‘Social Darwinism’ was very rare before 1940.

The massive increase in the JSTOR database, with its major extension of non-English texts, allows us to put more emphasis on the fact that mention of ‘Social Darwinism’ occurred in a mere few dozen items, which constitute only 0.016% of the entire ‘relevant’ corpus up to 1939. This strengthens the preceding, more cautious, suggestion that ‘Social Darwinism’ by the 1930s was almost a dead issue, occupying a tiny minority of minds. As now revealed, this decline is even more dramatic in the European Continental literature. By 1930, ‘Social Darwinism’ in the social sciences was an insignificant topic of discussion, for critics or likely advocates. If it were to be revived, it would have to be reinvented.

In the nadir of the 1930s, however, the seeds of its recovery were sown. During the Great Depression, many leading intellectuals would reflect on established ideas, and on the legitimacy of an economic system that had brought mass unemployment and impoverishment. Amid this crisis, ‘Social Darwinism’ would itself mutate. The changed object of criticism would highlight growing concerns, and the narrative on ‘Social Darwinism’ would be much more successful in its replication. After 1941, with the anti-capitalist Soviet Union installed as an ally in the global war against fascism, criticism of this re-invented Social Darwinism received a major boost.

4 Social Darwinism reinvented: 1932–1944

The intervention of Parsons ( 1932 ) was crucial. In a lengthy article on Alfred Marshall, Parsons mentioned Social Darwinism twice. Parsons ( 1932 , p. 325) briefly noted the application of Darwinian concepts to social science and a footnote described ‘the application of Darwinian concepts of variation and selection to social evolution’ as ‘Social Darwinism,’ giving obscure and unclear reasons for rejecting this line of thought, and without naming any of its proponents. Parsons rejected Social Darwinism because for him it meant the application of Darwinian concepts in the social sciences. Preceded by Perry ( 1918 ) and Woods ( 1920 ), Parsons ( 1932 ) made it an analytical as well as an ideological danger. His rising influence within sociology made this a lasting feature. Unlike the other three key players, his motives were solely analytical and academic, and neither ideological nor political.

Parsons simply focussed on the application of core Darwinian concepts such as variation and selection to the analysis of social change. Core Darwinian concepts of variation and selection might apply to individuals, groups, cultural memes, or other entities that cannot be understood solely in biological terms. Parsons’s prohibition would apply to these too.

For example, Thorstein Veblen’s ( 1899 , p. 188) analysis of the ‘natural selection of institutions’ or of ‘the fittest habits of thought’ would also, according to Parsons, be ‘Social Darwinism’. However, despite his explicit use of Darwinian ideas, Veblen is rarely described as a ‘Social Darwinist’. An exception is A. W. Coats ( 1954 , p. 532) who saw Veblen as adopting ‘an extreme form of Social Darwinism’. It is possible that, for many others, Veblen’s socialist sympathies (Hodgson 2023 ) exempted him from such a description. If so, this is evidence that accusations of ‘Social Darwinism’ were increasingly directed against defenders of capitalism and competition. However, Parsons was relatively unconcerned about these political issues.

In another footnote, Parsons ( 1932 , p. 341) wrote: ‘Pareto, like Marshall and Weber, sharply repudiates what he calls “Social Darwinism.”’ Parsons, however, gave no references and cited no rejection of Social Darwinism in their works. No explicit refutation exists in the works of these authors. Although Marshall ( 1920 ) mentioned Darwin a few times, it was not in repudiation. In fact, Marshall was an explicit devotee of the works of Spencer (Thomas 1991 ; Hodgson 1993 ), who today is widely but misleadingly described as a Social Darwinist. Parsons’s standards of scholarship were somewhat defective.

Parsons was a man with a mission. He used the term ‘Social Darwinism’ in his grand project to rebuild his discipline, and to establish boundaries between good and bad sociology. As well as placing Europeans, principally Karl Marx, Émile Durkheim and Max Weber, in the pantheon of sociological fame, Parsons wished to demote earlier American sociologists such as William G. Sumner, Lester F. Ward, Charles H. Cooley and Edward A. Ross. Despite their big analytical and ideological differences, they had all dallied with Darwinian ideas. With this rebuttal, Parsons did not distinguish between those Darwin-inspired American sociologists – notably Ward Footnote 8 – who opposed racism and eugenics, and others – such as Ross – who were racists or supporters of eugenics. Parsons condemned them all. He wanted to re-establish American sociology on an entirely different footing, free of biological concepts.

Parsons was not alone with these concerns. Arguments in favour of severing the links between the behavioural sciences and biology had gathered momentum in the early years of the 20th century (Degler 1991 ; Hodgson 2004a ). They were particularly notable in behaviourist psychology, founded by Watson ( 1914 , 1919 ), which emphasised social nurture much more than biological nature. Growing numbers of social scientists downplayed biological explanations, and went further, to sever all links with biology.

After Parsons’s intervention in 1932, the meaning of Social Darwinism widened. It had an additional purpose. It was applied not exclusively to doctrines of race struggle or war, but also to any application of Darwinism or related biological ideas to the study of human society.

Another major change occurred when Bernhard J. Stern ( 1933 ) became the first person to describe William G. Sumner as a Social Darwinist. Stern had established an academic reputation among American anthropologists and sociologists. In 1932 and 1937, Stern visited the Soviet Union and became an enthusiastic supporter of the regime. He was recruited by the US Communist Party. In 1936, he became one of the founders and editors of the Marxist social science journal,  Science and Society . He applauded the 1938 trial of Nicolai Bukharin and accepted the Soviet explanation of the 1939 Hitler–Stalin pact (Kan 2021 ). After the war, he was a victim of McCarthyite persecution (Bloom 1990 ).

Four years after Stern had labelled Sumner as a Social Darwinist, Leo Rogin ( 1937 , p. 413), a Keynesian economist and sympathiser of the Soviet Union, uncritically quoted the Russian sociologist B. I. Smoulevitch ( 1936 , p. 95) who had seen Spencer as influenced by ‘Social Darwinism’. Footnote 9 Previously, Spencer had not been so described. Stern and Rogin gave the green light to others, thus further widening the meaning of the term. Both were respected and Rogin was particularly influential among US academics. Rogin taught and strongly influenced the economist John Kenneth Galbraith (Dimand and Koehn 2008 ) and the future Nobel Laureate in Economics Douglass C. North ( 2005 ).

This highly belated addition of Spencer and Sumner as Social Darwinists must be explained. More than previously, I would now emphasise the effect of the Great Depression, the growing criticism of capitalism among intellectuals at that time, and the growing sympathy for the Soviet Union, which to many seemed to be a superior economic system. Although Marx regarded Darwin as a great biologist, he rejected the application of Darwinian principles to social science. The stumbling block for Marxists and others was that Darwinism was seen as focusing on competition between individuals, as if the whole scientific credo was a byproduct of some version of 19th-century market liberalism. Petr Kropotokin ([1902] 1939) corrected this individualist interpretation and pointed to Darwin’s ( 1871 ) extensive discussion of cooperation and group selection in his Descent of Man. Even here, however, competition was still paramount, where the fitter human groups would be selected. Footnote 10 Competition generally was an anathema to Marxists and many other social scientists. It was associated with the capitalist system and its defects.

As an editor of Science and Society, Stern ( 1941a , p. 181) described statements by the US anthropologist Earnest Hooton as ‘antidemocratic, ruthless, social-Darwinian utterances’ that encourage ‘the development of the fascist ideology in the United States.’ Footnote 11 This stimulated several rejoinders in the pages of that journal, by eminent scholars including the leading biologist J. B. S. Haldane ( 1941 – then a Communist Party sympathiser). Haldane rejected the idea that Darwin was a racist. In his reply to Haldane, Stern ( 1941b , pp. 374–5) bemoaned:

the plethora of baneful apologetics of capitalism in the social science field that transfer the theory of natural selection into an analysis of man’s survival and status in capitalist society. … The social Darwinian sees only biological factors at work, and finds capitalism beneficially selective of superior stocks. Some … oppose making medical attention available to the poor on the grounds that it would help perpetuate inferior stocks. I contend that, since these writers have utilized Darwin’s theoretical principles in the field of social theory and apply the formula of natural selection to the problem of human survival, they may justly be called social Darwinian.

But despite the ‘plethora of baneful apologetics of capitalism’ in the social sciences, Stern cited none. Echoing Parsons ( 1932 ), Stern criticised anyone who applied ‘Darwin’s theoretical principles’ to the social sciences. Thereby Parsons’s account of Social Darwinism was amalgamated with the Marxist reinvention of Social Darwinian as a flawed defence of capitalism and competition.

In a further comment in Science and Society, by Emily R. Grace and M. F. Ashley Montagu ( 1940 ), appears a translation of an entry in ‘the latest Soviet philosophical dictionary’ (published in 1940): ‘ Social Darwinian: - is an incorrect transference of the law of the struggle for existence in the world of animals and plants, discovered by Darwin, to the sphere of social relationships, to the sphere of class struggle.’ The official Soviet dictionary then goes on to claim that this doctrine has been used to justify capitalism, imperialism, exploitation and racism. This shows that by 1940 the term was used in Soviet academia as part of its critique of capitalism. Footnote 12 This observation is all the more significant because in the 3 years from 1940 to 1942 inclusive the term ‘Social Darwinism’ was still rare in the literature. In JSTOR overall there were only 17 articles and reviews that contained the term (or similar) in those 3 years. Four of these were in Science and Society. A group of pro-Soviet Marxist intellectuals, who had experienced the economic collapse of the Great Depression, lit the fuse for the imminent explosion of usage of the term ‘Social Darwinism’.

Among the 17 articles and reviews in the 1940–42 period was Richard Hofstadter’s ( 1941 ) ‘William Graham Sumner, Social Darwinist’. Therein he also described Herbert Spencer as a Social Darwinist. Hofstadter had joined the US Communist Party in 1938 but left in the following year because of the Hitler–Stalin pact. Ideologically, he remained anti-capitalist for years. In a 1939 letter he declared: ‘I hate capitalism and everything that goes with it.’ In 1940, he claimed that studying Social Darwinism helped to explain ‘the disparity between our official individualism and the bitter facts of life as anyone could see them during the great depression.’ In 1944, he published Social Darwinism in American Thought. It was based on his 1938 PhD thesis. It has gone through several reprints and editions. It was reported in the 1992 edition that since 1955 it had sold 200,000 copies. Footnote 13

Hofstadter’s ( 1944 ) book was not intended as a systematic survey of the history of Social Darwinism. Instead, his chapters were a pick and mix of alleged proponents, critics, and their ideas. He relied almost entirely on secondary sources. He made no systematic searches for the term in the literature. Chapter one is on the impact of Darwinism. Chapter two is devoted to Spencer, followed by chapter three on Sumner. He thus depicted the rise of ‘Social Darwinism’ as first and foremost about selfish individualism and competition. Four chapters follow, relating largely to early critiques of Spencer, Sumner and of their celebrations of individualism, competition. and a minimal state. Discussion of eugenics occupies only seven pages in chapter eight – about one-third of that chapter. Then follows a substantial chapter on racism and imperialism, but it does not mention the fascism that was then storming Europe and East Asia. In his conclusion, Hofstadter ( 1944 , p. 203) wrote: ‘As a conscious philosophy, social Darwinism had largely disappeared by the end of the [First World] war.’ A few lines later he surmised: ‘A resurgence of social Darwinism, in either its individualist or imperialist uses, is always a possibility’. But he wrote as if fascism had not become a major threat, and the Second World War had not started. Neither fascism, Hitler, Mussolini nor Nazism appear in the index of the book.

On Social Darwinism and fascism, Hofstadter was slow off the mark. As noted previously, Stern ( 1941a ) had seen Social Darwinist utterances as encouraging fascism in the US. In book in the same year, William M. McGovern ( 1941 , p. 624) went further to claim that Nazism was based on Social Darwinism. This is possibly the first clear claim of this kind.

Hofstadter ( 1944 ) devoted foremost attention to the novel reconstruction of Social Darwinism, which accented individualism and competition, with Spencer and Sumner as its principal proponents. The neglect of the global war against fascism might have helped the promotion of the book as a scholarly retrospective on the history of Social Darwinism. It also served the purposes of the Soviet Union and its Western sympathisers to depict Social Darwinism as a celebration of individualism, competition and capitalism. There was enough of a narrative on imperialism and racism in Hofstadter’s book to remain pertinent during an anti-fascist war. There was nothing in the volume to stop others referring to Hitler and the Nazis as Social Darwinists.

Competitive, individualist versions of ‘Social Darwinism’ were identified and highlighted, thanks foremost to Hofstadter ( 1941 ) and to the accounts of others. From 1941 the Soviet Union was a vital ally. The criticisms of selfish individualism and competition were stimulated by the Great Depression and echoed the anti-capitalist ideology of the Soviet Union. The new, Marxist-inspired narrative on ‘Social Darwinism’, which emerged from the Great Depression, was adaptable enough to prosper during the Second World War. Attacks on ‘Social Darwinism’ for supporting militarism and war, which had been uppermost in 1914–1918, were given much less emphasis. They had to be muted for another reason. The newly acquired perpetrators of Social Darwinism, namely Spencer and Sumner, were themselves opponents of militarism and war.

Figure  1 indicates the extent of the discourse on Social Darwinism from 1870 to 2009. For each decade, it shows JSTOR articles or reviews mentioning ‘Social Darwinism’ (with variants in English, and in other languages) as a percentage of all relevant JSTOR articles or reviews. Footnote 14 In the decades from the 1870s to the 1930s inclusive, ‘Social Darwinism’ was very rarely used, particularly in the Anglophone literature. From the beginning of the 20th century to the 1930s, its percentage significantly declined. Developments in the 1930s and early 1940s, including a substantial shift of meaning of the term, completely changed this trajectory. Thanks to Hofstadter ( 1944 ) and others, in the context of sympathy for the Soviet Union during a global anti-fascist war, usage of ‘Social Darwinism’ exploded.

Articles or reviews mentioning ‘Social Darwinism’ as a percentage of all relevant JSTOR articles or reviews (JSTOR searches conducted 31 July 2023. Searches in English, French, German or Italian)

5 After 1944: Some highlights

Figure  2 shows the huge upsurge from the 1940s in usage of the term ‘Social Darwinism’ (or equivalents in English, French, German or Italian). The figure shows the absolute numbers of articles or reviews involved. The explosion in usage from the 1940s to the 1990s is equally apparent.

Number of JSTOR articles or reviews in which ‘Social Darwinism’ appears (JSTOR searches conducted 31 July 2023. Searches in English, French, German and Italian)

Given the overall numbers involved, we can sample only a few instances for closer examination. Consider two appearances in the 1950s, which shortly followed the upsurge that started in 1944. In an article entitled ‘Darwin and Social Darwinism’, Gloria McConnaughey ( 1950 ) reflected the view of Parsons and others, which associates Social Darwinism with the use of Darwinian concepts in social science. McConnaughey ( 1950 , p. 397) opined: ‘All writers who have tried to explain politics and morals in terms of natural selection may, with some justice, be called Social Darwinists .’ She then turned to Darwin himself, making clear that he did not give ‘unqualified support to the racist school of anthropology, which postulates biologically superior races; his system of racial classification, rudimentary though it is, is based upon levels of culture’ (McConnaughey 1950 , p. 405). In her conclusion, she asked if Darwin was a Social Darwinist: ‘If by Social Darwinism we merely mean the application of natural selection to ethical and social problems, the answer is obviously yes. If, however, Social Darwinism is taken to refer to the strongly imperialistic, racist and anti-social-reform uses of natural selection, the answer is just as clearly no’ (McConnaughey 1950 , p. 412). Her reservations did not prevent the explosion in usage that was underway.

A few years later, the American sociologist and anthropologist George E. Simpson ( 1959 ) published an article also entitled ‘Darwin and “Social Darwinism”’. Rather than looking at the usage of the term itself, Simpson presumed what Social Darwinism meant and then found illustrative exemplars. Simpson ( 1959 , p. 34) wrote: ‘The application of Darwin's principle human society, with special emphasis on competition and struggle, became known as “Social Darwinism.”’ He then opined that this view was ‘endorsed by the advocates of unrestricted competition in private enterprise, the colonial expansionists, and opponents of voluntary social change.’ No examples were given. He then named the German biologist Ernst Haeckel as providing scientific sanction for these views. Simpson ( 1959 , p. 35) also declared: ‘Herbert Spencer and William Graham Sumner were prominent in advancing the doctrine of the social Darwinists.’ Given their prominence, it is strange that no-one named them as Social Darwinists before the 1930s. Simpson ( 1959 , p. 39) then went to discuss Hitler, concluding that ‘Hitlerism represents the most extreme variety of social Darwinism’. Less cautiously than McConnaughey, and notably on the centenary of Darwin’s ( 1859 ) Origin of Species , Simpson painted a wide picture of Social Darwinism that would resonate among subsequent authors in following decades. According to him, Social Darwinism could be found among libertarians such as Spencer and fascists such as Hitler. Simpson was not the only author to lump their hugely different views under the Social Darwinist heading. The new, widened meaning of the term that emerged in the 1932–1944 period has persisted ever since.

Meanwhile, in biology, a new synthesis between Darwinian principles and genetics was being strengthened (Fisher 1930 ; Wright 1931 ; Dobzhansky, 1937; Huxley 1942 ; Mayr 1942 ). The 1953 discovery of the structure of DNA encouraged further development of this synthesis, with spectacular scientific results. Consequently, within biology, Darwinism became the pre-eminent paradigm, after a period in the late 19th and early 20th century when it had been partially eclipsed (Bowler 1989 ). These developments were bound to affect the social sciences, and so they did. Consequently, the economists Armen Alchian ( 1950 ) and Milton Friedman ( 1953 ) deployed Darwinian selection in their work. Adolf Berle ( 1950 ) used Darwinian ideas in political analysis. A slow undercurrent of Darwinian references became apparent (Hayek 1960 , 1967 ; Campbell 1965 ; Boulding 1981 ). These prepared the ground in the 1990s for fuller developments of Darwinian ideas in socio-economic contexts. These would not be described as ‘Social Darwinism’ by their advocates. The ongoing critical rejection of ‘Social Darwinism’, however, would still inhibit their development.

As Fig.  2 shows, accusations Social Darwinism in the social sciences were unabated. One of the most serious critiques of Social Darwinism is the book by Hawkins ( 1997 ) on Social Darwinism in European and American Thought, 1860–1945. The remainder of this section is devoted to this important book. In some ways, Hawkins’ book is an impressive work of scholarship, covering many thinkers in the 18th and 19th centuries. In 2023, Hawkins’ book had 84 Citations on the Web of Science and 1067 on Google Scholar. It has had a relatively high impact. Footnote 15

Hawkins’ book received high praise from another critic of Social Darwinism. Richard Weikart ( 1997 ) pronounced that it ‘will surely become the standard work on the subject for some time to come. It is a superb corrective to the fairly popular revisionist interpretation of Social Darwinism propagated by Robert Bannister and others.’ Some other reviews were much more critical. Footnote 16

To Spencer, Sumner, Hitler and several others, Hawkins ( 1997 , pp. 11, 120–22, 175–) added unexpected recruits such as Willam James and John Dewey to his list of ‘Social Darwinists’. Their sins were to deploy Darwinian insights in psychology and social science, and to admit some biological influences on human nature. The list of Social Darwinists became longer and more varied.

Hawkins deals innovatively with the problem of wide ideological divergence and variety (from Spencer to Hitler) among the alleged adherents, by defining Social Darwinism as a ‘world view’ rather than as an ideology. This is an attempt to overcome the ideological diversity, from libertarianism to fascism, that has been gathered under the label of Social Darwinism and has thwarted past attempts to define it. According to Hawkins ( 1997 , p. 31), the world view of the Social Darwinists consisted of the following elemental beliefs:

biological laws governed the whole of organic nature, including humans;

the pressure of population growth on resources generated a struggle of existence among organisms;

physical and mental traits conferring an advantage on the possessors in this struggle (or in sexual competition), could, through inheritance, spread through the population;

the cumulative effects of selection and inheritance over time accounted for the emergence of new species and the elimination of others.’

Social Darwinists believed that ‘biological laws’ extend to ‘many (if not all) aspects of culture’ which ‘can be explained by the application of the first four elements’.

Element (i) is unclear. Hawkins referred to ‘biological laws’ without specifying what those laws are. There are no laws in biology that are equivalent in explanatory status to say, Newton’s laws in physics. There may be empirical regularities in biology, but these are often fallible or contingent. In this category fall the ‘laws of variation’ in chapter five of The Origin of Species. Darwin’s principal achievement was to develop an analytical framework that could be applied to biological populations. This framework highlighted variation, selection, and inheritance. To apply his theory, one had to bring in auxiliary explanations that were typically specific to the species and circumstances involved. Darwin did this repeatedly in his works.

It is also unclear what Hawkins is trying to reject in (i). Is he rejecting the belief (a) that biology determines (almost) everything in human society, or rejecting the weaker notion (b) that biology affects or constrains human capacities and behavioural outcomes? While some passages suggest the possibility of a more nuanced approach, Hawkins seems to reject both (a) and (b). This implies that biology can play no significant part in explanations of human phenomena. Human behaviour would be seen as entirely dependent on culture. There is no dual inheritance (Boyd and Richerson 1985 ) or any other mixed position. The (almost) all-culture view is not unique to Hawkins. It is still prevalent in sociology, but there must be some major biological and physical constraints on human capacities. To a large degree, these will be dependent on nutritional, social and environmental factors, but nature and biology also place limits on these capacities.

Element (ii) is a distortion of Darwinism. While forming his ideas, Darwin was influenced by Malthus on the issue of population pressure, but that is not the only reason for ‘the struggle for existence’. Darwin ( 1859 , ch. 3) used the concept in what he termed a ‘wide sense’. It referred broadly to efforts to obtain the means of life, flourishing and procreation. Alongside population pressure, Darwin included other factors, including access to food, the effects of predators, and adverse (seasonal or long-term) shifts in the climate. Darwin’s concept of the ‘struggle for existence’ involves any circumstance that limits the flourishing or fecundity of a species. Malthusian population pressure was just one possibility, among many others.

Hawkins blamed the concept of natural selection for many ills of Social Darwinism. Darwinian selection occurs because members of populations differ in their capacities to endure, survive and pass on key information and capacities to their progeny. Importantly, the occurrence of natural selection provides no warrant for presuming that the processes or outcomes are morally acceptable or superior . So why was Hawkins so hostile to the concept?

The crucial element (v) is related to Hawkins’ ( 1997 , p. 31) claim that human ‘culture cannot be reduced to biological principles’. This may be construed as a (reasonable) rejection of the idea that we can human cultural phenomena solely in biological terms. But Hawkins suggests more. Without mentioning him by name, Hawkins followed the prohibition by Parsons ( 1932 , 1937 ) on the use of core Darwinian concepts in social science. Hawkins noted that several ‘Social Darwinists’ considered entities other than genes as objects of selection. But he did not elaborate on the possibility that concepts such as variation, selection and inheritance could be applied to socio-economic evolution without endorsing explanations in terms of biological factors alone. Among others, works by Veblen ( 1898 , 1899 ), Keller ( 1915 ) and Donald T. Campbell ( 1965 ) applied Darwinian principles to human institutions and culture. None of these authors is mentioned by Hawkins.

Hawkins does mention Petr A. Kropotkin. The author of Mutual Aid is depicted as a well-intentioned progressive who fell victim to dangerous Darwinian ideas. Hawkins ( 1997 , p. 179) tried to rescue the Russian by questioning the Darwinian provenance of Kropotkin’s promotion of cooperation. Hawkins tells us that mutual aid was ‘not, for him, a consequence of natural selection as it was for the Darwinists’. This is patently false. Kropotkin ( 1939 , p.14) saw the principle of mutual aid as ‘nothing but a further development of ideas expressed by Darwin himself in The Descent of Man.’ In contrast to Hawkins’ inaccurate depiction of natural selection as always competitive or individualistic, Kropotkin ( 1939 , p. 72) insisted that ‘competition is not the rule either in the animal world or in mankind. It is limited among animals to exceptional periods, and natural selection finds better fields for its activity … natural selection continually seeks out the ways precisely for avoiding competition as much as possible.’ By Hawkins’ criteria, Kropotkin was a Social Darwinist. But Hawkins is reluctant to describe him as such, seemingly because Kropotkin was politically on the left.

Hawkins endorsed Marx and Engels, who rejected the application of Darwinian ideas to human society. But on occasions they would seem invoke them. In a famous passage in the German Ideology Marx and Engels ( 1976 , pp. 41–2) pointed out that human life ‘involves before everything else eating and drinking, housing, clothing and various other things.’ Although the difficulties involved in obtaining these means of life will vary enormously in time and space, some effort – great or small – is always involved. Admitting this would be a recognition of a universal struggle for existence. Given that the German Ideology was written over a decade before Darwin’s Origin, it would give Marx and Engels precedence. A ‘struggle for existence’ is found in early Marxism.

On 16 January 1861, shortly after The Origin of Species appeared, Marx wrote to Ferdinand Lassalle: ‘Darwin’s work is most important and suits my purpose in that it proves a basis in natural science for the historical class struggle.’ On 18 June 1862, Marx wrote to Engels: ‘It is remarkable how Darwin rediscovers, among the beasts and plants, the society of England with its division of labour, competition, opening up of new markets, “inventions,” and Malthusian “struggle for existence” … in Darwin, the animal kingdom figures as civil society.’ In these two letters Marx clearly indicated that Darwinian principles have some resonance, even relevance, for the understanding of the class struggle and modern society. Footnote 17

As noted by Hawkins ( 1997 , p. 152), there is a later passage where Engels claimed explicitly that Darwinian ideas were applicable a fortiori to capitalism. Engels wrote that capitalism entails ‘the Darwinian struggle of the individual for existence transferred from Nature to society with intensified violence. The conditions of existence natural to the animal appear as the final term of human development’ (Marx and Engels 1962 , vol. 2, p. 143). This seems to admit that capitalism (at least) can be analysed in part with the help of Darwinian concepts. But by the criteria of Parsons ( 1932 ) and Hawkins ( 1997 ), the use of Darwinian concepts in the analysis of any socio-economic system would suggest an adoption of Social Darwinism. So were Marx or Engels Social Darwinists?

Hawkins seemed aware of this possible question. He defended Marxism from the accusation of Social Darwinism by pointing out that capitalism is historically specific, and that under socialism the struggle for existence would ‘be transcended’. But he offered no explanation how. Imagining some unclearly specified future where people supposedly no longer face any struggle to exist does not get Marx and Engels off the hook. It would be necessary to explain how socialism worked, and how it would provide for everyone the means of life, apparently with little effort on their part. Contrary to Hawkins, the invocation of the word ‘socialism’ and its alleged marvels does not provide Marxism with a ‘Get Out of Social Darwinism Free’ card. Perhaps Marx and Engels share enough of the ‘world view’ to be classified as Social Darwinists?

Hawkins’ extensive account of Social Darwinism contains a number of serious analytical flaws. His biased account of Darwinian principles makes them less flexible and palatable for the social scientist. His ameliorating treatment of Kropotkin, Marx and Engels betrays the underlying ideological current in his book. Hawkins followed others by using Social Darwinism as an accusation against social scientists inspired by Darwinian ideas, fearing especially that they might lead to defences of markets and competition. From 1944 onwards the attack on ‘Social Darwinism’ became more of a leftist crusade, with creationists and other anti-Darwinists cheering on the sidelines. By shunning powerful modes of explanation of complex evolutionary phenomena in the socio-economic sphere, it has stunted the development of the social sciences.

6 Conclusion

It is shown here that before 1944 Social Darwinism was a rare term, almost entirely used by critics rather than proponents. It most prominent early usages were by Continental European critics of militarism, imperialism and war, writing in French or Italian. In the United States, from 1932 to 1944 the term underwent a major reconstruction of meaning. Parsons ( 1932 ) used the term to describe anyone who used core Darwinian concepts in social science. He wanted to exclude previous US sociologists who had been influenced by Darwinism from his recasting of sociological theory. Also at this time, the Great Depression led to disillusion with capitalism and greater sympathy for the planned economic system pioneered in the Soviet Union. Three Soviet sympathisers – Hofstadter, Rogin and Stern – described Spencer or Sumner as Social Darwinists. The competitive individualism promoted by Spencer and Sumner was seen as partly responsible for mass unemployment in the 1930s.

In his seminal book on Social Darwinism, reflecting his hostility to capitalism and individualism, Hofstadter put Spencer and Sumner first, before mentioning the alleged role of Social Darwinism in promoting eugenics, imperialism and racism. This reinvention of Social Darwinism, describing a wide range of ills from selfish individualism to fascism, and prohibiting any use of Darwinian concepts in social science, proved extraordinarily successful. Usage of the term exploded, to relative and absolute frequencies far higher than they were before the Second World War. This had a major effect on the development of social science. The reinforcement of barriers between Darwinism and the social sciences significantly affected the development of the latter.

Subsequently, with some notable exceptions, the use of Darwinian principles was avoided. After important developments in biology in the 1930s and 1940s, which synthesized genetics with a resurgent Darwinism, in the 1950s a few influential scholars promoted some Darwinian ideas in economics and politics. But, partly because of the unabating rejection of a supposed previous ‘Social Darwinism’, these approaches were subject to little further development. An exceptional, more detailed and important development of Darwinian ideas in the social sciences was by Campbell ( 1965 ). But even after that, progress was slow. In the 1980s and after, the deployment of Darwinian ideas in the social sciences became further systematized and generalized, particularly after key developments in the philosophy of biology. Footnote 18

It is easy to dismiss these more recent attempts as ‘Social Darwinist’. In the past, such rejections were based typically on ideology and prejudice, and not on any careful consideration of what these approaches might offer. Detailed critical discussion of the value or otherwise of Darwinian principles must proceed in a context where dismissive accusations of ‘Social Darwinism’ are more thoroughly scrutinized.

Data availability

The data reported in this article are available from its author on request.

This article originated in a webinar on ‘Social Darwinism: Myth or Menace’ involving the Darwin Club for Social Science on 13 March 2023. As well as anonymous referees, I thank the webinar participants and in particular Marion Blute for their comments.

Among the exceptions are Metcalfe ( 1998 ) and Andersen ( 2004 ).

The development of Darwinian ideas in evolutionary economics has been the subject of debate. See for example Cordes ( 2006 ), Hodgson ( 2007 ), Witt ( 2008 ), Dollimore and Hodgson ( 2014 ), and Hodgson ( 2019 ).

As noted below, this neglects Darwin’s ( 1871 ) account of human cooperation.

See also the revisionist criticisms of Jones ( 1980 ), Bellomy ( 1984 ), Claeys ( 2000 ), Crook ( 1994 , 1996 ), Leonard ( 2009 ) and others.

Hodgson ( 2004b ) was reprinted in Hodgson ( 2006 ). I should identify an error in my earlier article and its reprint. A passage (Hodgson 2004b , p. 446; 2006, p. 53) suggests that Hofstadter saw Lester F. Ward as a Social Darwinist. He did not.

A ‘relevant’ JSTOR article or review is defined as one that contains ‘human’ OR ‘social’ OR ‘societ*’ OR ‘econom*’, where * is a wildcard. My 2023 searches included ‘Social Darwinism’, ‘Social Darwinist’ and ‘Social Darwinian’. Concerning my 2023 searches, ‘Social Darwinism’ includes all three variants. The 2023 JSTOR searches were completed on 31 July.

Ward ( 1913 ) criticised eugenics.

Rogin ( 1937 , p. 414) saw the USSR as adhering ‘to a democratic utilitarian ethics – one which says that the hungry should be fed, the sick healed, and the dead decently buried.’ This evaluation is difficult to reconcile with the Soviet famine of 1930–33, where about 7 million people died because of Stalin’s policies (Conquest 1986 ).

There is a large literature on group selection including Sober and Wilson ( 1998 ) and Henrich ( 2004 ).

Stern’s ( 1941a ) strictures against racism were no doubt genuine. But he was an apologist for Stalin’s oppressive policies against ethnic minorities (Stern 1944 ; Kan 2021 ). Stern might have invented the term ‘Social Darwin ian ’, as it does not appear earlier. I omitted this variant from my 2002 search, but it was fully incorporated in the 2023 search reported here.

In the USSR, the rise of Lysenko’s quasi-Lamarckian doctrine in the 1930s (Joravsky 1970 ) made opposition to Darwinism state policy, alongside a foundational opposition to capitalism and individualism. Was the revived campaign after 1936 in the West against ‘Social Darwinism’ partly orchestrated by the Soviet authorities, using their sympathisers in the US? As yet, there is no clear evidence to support an affirmative answer.

Hofstadter ( 1944 ). Quotes are from the introduction by Eric Foner to Hofstadter ( 1992 , pp. x-xiv).

See the definition of ‘relevant’ in a preceding footnote.

The searches were conducted on 28 June 2023.

Weikart’s ( 2004 ) book on Darwin to Hitler was criticised by Gooday et al. ( 2008 ). The book received ‘crucial funding’ from the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, in Seattle, which funds works on intelligent design (Weikart 2004 , p. x). Johnson’s ( 1998 ) critical review of Hawkins ( 1997 ) saw it as ‘a deeply biased presentation of scientific and intellectual history in the service of a political agenda. The author demonstrates considerable erudition, but it is an erudition contaminated by his ideological commitments.’

Marx and Engels ( 1985 , pp. 246-7, 381). Note that the claim that Marx sought permission from Darwin to dedicate a volume of Capital to him is a myth (Feuer 1975 ; Fay 1978 ; Colp 1982 ).

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Hodgson, G.M. Social Darwinism Revisited: How four critics altered the meaning of a near-obsolete term, greatly increased its usage, and thereby changed social science. J Evol Econ (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00191-024-00862-w

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Darwinism designates a distinctive form of evolutionary explanation for the history and diversity of life on earth. Its original formulation is provided in the first edition of On the Origin of Species in 1859. This entry first formulates ‘Darwin’s Darwinism’ in terms of six philosophically distinctive themes: (i) probability and chance, (ii) the nature, power and scope of selection, (iii) adaptation and teleology, (iv) the interpretation of the concept of ‘species’, (v) the tempo and mode of evolutionary change, and (vi) the role of altruism and group selection in the explanation of morality. Both Darwin and his critics recognized that his approach to evolution was distinctive on each of these topics, and it remains true that, though Darwinism has developed in many ways unforeseen by Darwin, its proponents and critics continue to differentiate it from other approaches in evolutionary biology by focusing on these themes. This point is illustrated in the second half of the entry by looking at current debates in the philosophy of evolutionary biology on these six themes.

1. Introduction

2.1 darwin’s life, 2.2 darwin’s darwinism, 2.3 philosophical problems with darwin’s darwinism, 3.1 the roles of chance in evolutionary theory, 3.2 the nature, power and scope of selection, 3.3 selection, adaptation and teleology, 3.4 species and the concept of ‘species’, 3.5 tempo and mode of evolutionary change, 3.6 evolutionary ethics, altruism, and group selection, 4. conclusion, further reading, other internet resources, related entries.

Scientific theories are historical entities. Often you can identify key individuals and documents that are the sources of new theories—Einstein’s 1905 papers, Copernicus’ 1539 De Revolutionibus , Darwin’s On the Origin of Species . Sometimes, but not always, the theory tends in popular parlance to be named after the author of these seminal documents, as is the case with Darwinism.

But like every historical entity, theories undergo change through time. Indeed a scientific theory might undergo such significant changes that the only point of continuing to name it after its source is to identify its lineage and ancestry. This is decidedly not the case with Darwinism. As Jean Gayon has put it:

The Darwin-Darwinism relation is in certain respects a causal relation, in the sense that Darwin influenced the debates that followed him. But there is also something more: a kind of isomorphism between Darwin’s Darwinism and historical Darwinism. It is as though Darwin’s own contribution has constrained the conceptual and empirical development of evolutionary biology ever after. (Gayon 2003, 241)

Darwinism identifies a core set of concepts, principles and methodological maxims that were first articulated and defended by Charles Darwin and which continue to be identified with a certain approach to evolutionary questions. [ 1 ] We will thus need to begin with Darwin’s Darwinism as articulated in On the Origin of Species in 1859. We will then examine these same themes as they have been discussed by evolutionary biologists and philosophers of biology from the beginnings of the Neo-Darwinian Synthesis to the present.

Charles Darwin was not, as we use the term today, a philosopher, though he was often so described during his lifetime. [ 2 ] Nevertheless, for an encyclopedia of philosophy what is needed is a discussion of the impact of philosophy on Darwin’s Darwinism, and the impact of Darwin’s Darwinism on topics that both he, and we, would consider philosophical. We focus here on the impact of philosophical discussions about the nature of science during Darwin’s lifetime on Darwin’s scientific research, thinking and writing; and on the impact of that research, thinking and writing on philosophy. Taking the time to do such philosophical archaeology stems from a conviction that if the concept of Darwinism has legitimate application today, it is due to a set of principles, both scientific and philosophical, that were articulated by Darwin and that are still widely shared by those who call themselves ‘Darwinians’ or ‘neo-Darwinians’.

2. Darwin and Darwinism

Charles Darwin was born February 12, 1809 and died April 18, 1882. It was a time of radical changes in British culture, and his family background put him in the midst of those changes. His grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, was a prosperous and highly respected physician living in Western England, south of Birmingham. He was also a philosophical radical, advocating Enlightenment ideas about human equality and liberty, including the liberty to think freely about the existence of God and about natural origins for the earth’s creatures. He wrote a number of very popular works of natural history, some in verse, in which he defended views about progress that included evolutionary speculations about the upward progress of living things from primordial beginnings.

Erasmus Darwin was an early member of an informal group of free thinkers self-styled the Lunar Society, [ 3 ] that met regularly in Birmingham to discuss everything from the latest philosophical and scientific ideas to the latest advances in technology and industry. The Society included James Watt, Joseph Priestley and Charles Darwin’s other grandfather, Josiah Wedgwood. Wedgwood, like Erasmus Darwin, lived in Staffordshire and was in the process of developing a family pottery works into a major industrial concern by applying new scientific and technological ideas to the production of ‘china’. The religious inclinations of the group were ‘non-conforming’ and included a number of Unitarians, a sect Erasmus Darwin referred to as ‘a featherbed to catch a falling Christian’. Looked upon with suspicion by High Church conservatives, they actively promoted in Great Britain the revolutionary philosophical, scientific and political ideas sweeping across Europe and the Americas. Most had spent considerable time absorbing Enlightenment ideas in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Under the circumstances, it is not surprising that Robert Darwin, Charles’ father, should follow in his father’s footsteps and become a doctor, nor that he should end up marrying Susannah Wedgwood, by all reports Josiah’s favorite offspring. Politically and philosophically engaged, Susannah worked to organize her children’s education in the town of Shrewsbury, where she and Robert took up residence. She sent her children to a day school operated by Unitarian minister Rev. George Case and this is where Charles began his education. Unfortunately, Susannah died in 1817 when Charles was only 8, and his father then transferred him to the Shrewsbury School, operated by Dr. Samuel Butler, grandfather of the novelist (and sometime satirist of Darwin’s work) of the same name. “Nothing could have been worse for the development of my mind than Dr. Butler’s school” Charles proclaimed in the autobiography he wrote for his family, and he escaped down the street to his home whenever he could.

His older siblings took good care of him, under the Doctor’s watchful eye. Early letters indicate that he and his brother Erasmus were enthusiastic amateur chemists, and after his brother went up to Cambridge their letters were often full of possible experiments, orders to purchase chemicals and equipment for their ‘laboratory’, and discussions of the latest discoveries. This was an obvious enough passion that his classmates nicknamed him ‘Gas’. During summers he helped his father on his rounds to his patients, and when only 16 his father sent him and his brother to Edinburgh for the best medical education Great Britain had to offer. Erasmus needed to move from Cambridge to a proper medical school to complete his medical education, and young Charles was taken out of Shrewsbury School early to accompany his brother to Edinburgh, apparently being prepared to follow in his father’s and grandfather’s footsteps in medicine. The two brothers arrived in Edinburgh in October of 1825. Erasmus left after the first year, leaving his brother on his own during his second year at Edinburgh.

Privately, Darwin early on decided he could not practice medicine. But his already serious inclination toward science was considerably strengthened at Edinburgh both by some fine scientific lectures in chemistry, geology and anatomy and by the mentoring of Dr. Robert Grant. Grant certainly knew that young Charles was Erasmus Darwin’s grandson; Grant expounded evolutionary ideas derived from Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Charles’ grandfather. But his primary gift to Charles was introducing him to marine invertebrate anatomy and the use of the microscope as a scientific tool and as an aid to dissecting extremely small creatures dredged out of the Firth of Forth. Darwin joined an Edinburgh scientific society, the Plinean society, of which Grant was a prominent member, and presented two lectures that reported discoveries he had made while working with Grant. This interest in marine invertebrates was to be a life long obsession, climaxing in his massive four-volume contribution to the comparative anatomy and systematics of fossil and living Cirripedia or ‘barnacles’ (Barrett & Freeman 1988, vols. 11–13).

When he finally broke the news of his distaste for medicine to his father, he enrolled to take a degree in Divinity at Christ College, Cambridge University, from which he graduated in January of 1831. As with the Shrewsbury School and Edinburgh, his official course of study had very little impact on him, but while in Cambridge he befriended two young men attempting to institute serious reforms in the natural science curriculum at Cambridge, Rev. John Henslow, trained in botany and mineralogy, and Rev. Adam Sedgwick, a leading member of the rapidly expanding community of geologists. Henslow and his wife treated Darwin almost as a son, and through Henslow Darwin was introduced to the men whose ideas were currently being debated in geology and natural history, as well as to men whom we look back on as among the very first to take up the historical and philosophical foundations of science as a distinct discipline, Sir John Herschel and Rev. William Whewell. As he wrote in his autobiography:

During my last year at Cambridge, I read with care and profound interest Humboldt’s Personal Narrative . This work, and Sir J. Herschel’s Introduction to the Study of Natural Philosophy , [ 4 ] stirred up in me a burning zeal to add even the most humble contribution to the noble structure of Natural Science. No one or a dozen other books influenced me nearly so much as these two.

In the next section we will discuss the influence of the philosophical ideals of Herschel and Lyell on Darwin.

Furthering his scientific training, Adam Sedgwick on two occasions took Darwin on extended geological tours of England and Wales. In addition Darwin and a cousin, William Darwin Fox, a year ahead of him at Cambridge, developed what began as an amateur passion for bug collecting into serious entomology.

His Edinburgh and Cambridge mentors were to shape Darwin’s philosophical attitudes and scientific career decisively. It was Henslow who was the final link to Darwin in a chain connected to Captain Robert Fitzroy of H. M. S. Beagle. Fitzroy sought a gentleman companion who could also collect information on geology and natural history during a proposed circumnavigation of the globe. Henslow’s note to Darwin, asking if he would be interested in being recommended for this post, arrived at the Darwin home, ‘the Mount’, while Charles Darwin was on a geological survey of Northern Wales with Adam Sedgwick. After resistance from his father had been overcome, Darwin was offered the post and accepted it.

The combination of meticulous field observation, collection and experimentation, note taking, reading and thinking during what turned into the Beagle’s five year journey through a very wide cross-section of the earth’s environments was to set the course for the rest of his life. During the voyage he read and reread Charles Lyell’s newly published Principles of Geology , a three-volume work that articulated a philosophical vision of rigorously empirical historical science, oriented around five key ideas:

• The geologist investigates both the animate and inanimate changes that have taken place during the earth’s history.
• His principal tasks are to develop an accurate and comprehensive record of those changes, to encapsulate that knowledge in general laws, and to search for their causes.
• This search must be limited to causes that can be studied empirically—those ‘now in operation’, as Lyell puts it in the sub-title of his Principles , on the assumption that they have always operated, into the deep past, at the same intensity at which they now operate.
• The records or ‘monuments’ of the earth’s past indicate a constant process of the ‘introduction’ and ‘extinction’ of species, and it is the geologist’s task to search for the causes of these introductions and extinctions, according to the strictures note in 3., above.
• The only serious attempt to do so according to the idea that species are capable of ‘indefinite modification’, that of Jean Baptiste Lamarck, is a failure on methodological grounds. All the evidence supports the view that species variability is limited, and that one species cannot be transformed into another.

This vision influenced Darwin profoundly, as he freely admitted. While he became convinced by his observations and reading that the fossil record and current distribution of species could only be due to the gradual transformation of one species into another, he was determined to articulate a theory that measured up to Lyell’s principles. The crucial event in convincing him that this was to be his life’s work was likely a visit to Cape Town, South Africa during the Beagle’s return trip to England. John F. W. Herschel was in Cape Town on a mission to do for the Southern Hemisphere what his father William had done for the Northern, namely to develop a comprehensive star map with the new powerful telescopes developed by his father and aunt. As noted earlier, Darwin had been deeply impressed by Herschel’s Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy when it first appeared a year before the Beagle set sail, and in his private journal he referred to his meetings with Herschel during a week long stop in Cape Town in June of 1836 as among the most profound events of the entire voyage. Just five months before meeting Darwin, Herschel had finished reading the 2 nd edition of Lyell’s Principles . He sent Lyell a long letter filled with detailed constructive commentary. The letter opens by praising Lyell for facing the issue of the ‘introduction of new species’—which Herschel calls ‘that mystery of mysteries’—scientifically, and for advocating that we search for ‘intermediate causes’ to explain these ‘introductions’—code for natural, as opposed to ‘miraculous’, causes. [ 5 ] This part of the letter was quoted in Charles Babbage’s Bridgewater Treatise , published in 1837 while Darwin was struggling to develop just such a theory. Upon reading the Herschel quotation in Babbage, Darwin wrote in his private ‘species’ notebooks:

Babbage 2d Edit, p. 226.—Herschel calls the appearance of new species. the mystery of mysteries. & has grand passage upon problem.! Hurrah.—“intermediate causes”. (Barrett et al., 1987, 413; original punctuation)

He clearly recognizes that Herschel is here providing a philosophical justification for the project upon which Darwin was secretly working. And, in the very first paragraph of On the Origin of Species , Darwin looks back to this ‘Hurrah’, attributing the idea that the origin of species is ‘that mystery of mysteries’ to ‘one of our greatest philosophers’, without mentioning Herschel by name. The first mention of the possibility of an evolutionary solution to this problem is in his Ornithological Notebooks , in a note written shortly after departing Cape Town. [ 6 ]

Darwin’s theoretical task was, by the time he opened his species notebooks, tolerably clear: the only process that could produce the systematic patterns in the fossil record and the otherwise strange biogeographic distribution of species he now understood so widely and deeply was a process of slow, gradual transformation of species. He needed to come up with a natural, causal theory that would account for such transformations, and every element of that theory had to identify ‘causes now in operation’, causes that could be investigated empirically. The problem, and the methodological constraints, had been advocated by his geological hero, and now close friend, Charles Lyell; and they had been defended philosophically by his philosophical hero, Sir John Herschel.

Darwin, of course, expected, and got, outraged reactions from religiously conservative colleagues, such as his old geology teacher Sedgwick, who in a review expressed his “deep aversion to the theory; because of its unflinching materialism;–because it has deserted the inductive track,–the only track that leads to physical truth;–because it utterly repudiates final causes, and therby [sic] indicates a demoralized understanding on the part of its advocates.” What he had not expected was Lyell’s refusal to openly endorse his theory and Herschel’s decisive (if polite) rejection of its key elements. After we set out the theory in its Darwinian form, we can consider these reactions from those who apparently shared Darwin’s philosophical norms about scientific theory, explanation and confirmation.

The theory can be set out as a series of causal elements that, working together, will produce the needed transformations.

• Species are comprised of individuals that vary ever so slightly from each other with respect to their many traits.
• Species have a tendency to increase in numbers over generations at a geometric rate.
• This tendency is checked, to use the language of Thomas Malthus’ On the Principle of Population , by limited resources, disease, predation, and so on, creating a struggle for existence among the members of a species.
• Some individuals will have variations that give them a slight advantage in this struggle, variations that allow more efficient or better access to resources, greater resistance to disease, greater success at avoiding predation, and so on.
• These individuals will tend to survive better and leave more offspring.
• Offspring tend to inherit the variations of their parents.
• Therefore favorable variations will tend to be passed on more frequently than others and thus be preserved, a tendency Darwin labeled ‘Natural Selection’.
• Over time, especially in a slowly changing environment, this process will cause the character of species to change.
• Given a long enough period of time, the descendant populations of an ancestor species will differ enough both from it and each other to be classified as different species, a process capable of indefinite iteration. There are, in addition, forces that encourage divergence among descendant populations, and the elimination of intermediate varieties.

It will be noticed that there is no element of this theory that is incapable of empirical investigation—indeed by now the published confirmatory studies of this process would fill a small library. [ 7 ] One can understand why devout and orthodox Christians would have problems; but why Darwin’s philosophical and scientific mentors? It would seem to be the model of Herschelian/Lyellian orthodoxy.

The answer lies in six philosophically problematic elements of the theory.

2.3.1 Probability and Chance

First, notice the use of the language of ‘tendencies’ and ‘frequencies’ in the above principles. Privately, Darwin learned, Herschel had referred to his theory as ‘the Law of higgledy-piggledy’, presumably a reference to the large element played in its key principles by chance and probability. Darwin’s theory is, as we would say today, a ‘statistical’ theory. One cannot say that every individual with favorable variation v will survive or will leave more offspring than individuals without it; one cannot say that no environment will ever support all of the offspring produced in a given generation, and thus that there must always be a competitive struggle. These are things that tend to happen due to clearly articulated causes, and this allows us to make accurate predictions about trends , at the level of populations, but not to make absolute claims about what must happen in each and every case. Only well after Herschel’s time did philosophers of science become comfortable with the idea of a theory of this sort, and the proper philosophical understanding of such explanations is still debated.

2.3.2 The Nature, Power and Scope of Selection

The core of Darwin’s theory is the concept of natural selection. Perhaps because of his use of the term selection, this core element of his theory apparently baffled nearly everyone. Could it be, as Lyell, Herschel and Darwin’s great American defender Asa Gray would ask, an ‘intermediate cause’, i.e. a causal principle instituted and sustained by God? Or is it, in its very nature, the antithesis of such a principle, as his old geology teacher Sedgwick believed? Could it possibly create species, or is it, by its nature, a negative force, eliminating what has already been created by other means? In one of his copies of On the Origin of Species , Alfred Russell Wallace crosses out ‘natural selection’ and writes ‘survival of the fittest’ next to it. Wallace always felt that ‘selection’ inappropriately imported anthropomorphic notions of Nature choosing purposefully between variants into natural history. And, in a devastating review, Fleeming Jenkin happily accepted the principle of natural selection but challenged its power to modify an ancestral species into descendent species, and thus limited its scope to the production of varieties. A number of reviewers, even some sympathetic ones, questioned the possibility of extending the theory to account for the evolution of those characteristics that differentiate humans from their nearest relatives.

2.3.3 Selection, Adaptation and Teleology

Moreover, because Darwin was very fond of describing natural selection as a process that worked for the good of each species, Darwin’s followers seemed to have diametrically opposed views as to whether his theory eliminated final causes from natural science or breathed new life into them. In either case, there was also serious disagreement on whether this was a good thing or a bad thing. [ 8 ]

2.3.4 Species and the Concept of ‘Species’

There is a fundamental philosophical problem with the idea that a species can undergo a series of changes that will cause it to become one or more other species. To illustrate it, look carefully at the first question that Charles Lyell wishes to address in the second volume of the Principles of Geology :

…first, whether species have a real and permanent existence in nature; or whether they are capable, as some naturalists pretend, of being indefinitely modified in the course of a long series of generations. (Lyell 1831, II. 1)

Lyell pretty clearly assumes that to allow for evolution is to deny the reality of species. For a species to be ‘real’, it must have ‘permanent existence in nature’, or as he puts it elsewhere , “…fixed limits beyond which the descendants from common parents can never deviate from a certain type…”. (Lyell 1831, II. 23) To accept evolutionary change, on this view, you must become comfortable with a variety of nominalism about species. And Darwin seems to have become so. [ 9 ]

Hence I look at individual differences, though of small interest to the systematist, as of high importance for us, as being the first step towards such slight varieties as are barely thought worth recording in works on natural history. And I look at varieties which are in any degree more distinct and permanent, as steps leading to more strongly marked and more permanent varieties; and at these latter, as leading to sub-species, and to species. (Darwin 1859, 52)

Permanence, as applied to species, is for Darwin a relative concept, and there are no fixed limits to variability within a species. Given enough time the individual differences found in all populations can give rise to more permanent and stable varieties, these to sub-species, and these to populations that systematists will want to class as distinct species. Moreover, he concludes the Origin with very strong words on this topic, words bound to alarm his philosophical readers:

Systematists will be able to pursue their labours as at present; but they will not be incessantly haunted by the shadowy doubt whether this or that form be in essence a species. …In short, we will have to treat species in the same manner as those naturalists treat genera, who admit that genera are merely artificial combinations made for convenience. This may not be a cheering prospect; but we shall at least be freed from the vain search for the undiscovered and undiscoverable essence of the term species. (Darwin 1859, 485)

Lyell, Herschel, Whewell, Sedgwick and many of Darwin’s contemporaries certainly would not find this a cheering prospect, since they were unrepentant realists about species. [ 10 ] Members of a species possess a ‘type’ established in the original parents, and this type provides ‘fixed limits’ to variability. Lyell clearly feels this is an empirically verifiable fact—most of chapters 2–4 of Principles Vol. II is devoted to presenting the evidence that such ‘fixed limits’ exist; and after the Origin’s publication this evidence was canvassed again in Fleeming Jenkin’s review. If this is so, then species extinction is easy to account for—there are fixed limits to a species’ ability to track environmental change. But a naturalistic account of species origination is more difficult, since there will need to be, in sexually reproducing species, a natural production of a new pair of parents with a new type. On the other hand, to adopt the sort of nominalism that Darwin seems to be advocating in the above quotations has undesirable consequences as well. [ 11 ] How are we to formulate objective principles of classification? What sort of a science of animals and plants will be possible if there are no fixed laws relating their natures to their characteristics and behaviors? A good deal of chapter 2 of Darwin’s Origin is devoted to convincing the reader that current best practice among botanists and zoologists accepts a natural world organized as he is insisting rather than as his opponents claim:

It must be admitted that many forms, considered by highly competent judges as varieties, have so perfectly the character of species that they are ranked by other highly competent judges as good and true species. (Darwin 1859, 49)

From a Darwinian perspective, this is a predictable consequence of the fact that the organisms we today wish to classify as species are merely the most recent stage of a slow, gradual evolutionary process. Organisms within a genus have common ancestors, perhaps relatively recent common ancestors; some naturalists may see ten species with a few varieties in each; others may rank some of the varieties as species and divide the same genus into twenty species. Both classifications may be done with the utmost objectivity and care by skilled observers. As systematists like to say, some of us are ‘lumpers’, some of us are ‘splitters’. Reality is neither.

2.3.5 Tempo and Mode of Evolutionary Change

The question of nominalism versus realism regarding species points toward a final aspect of Darwin’s theory with which many of those otherwise sympathetic to him disagreed, his gradualism. For apart from the question of whether his views entailed ‘nominalism’ about natural kinds, they do seem to reflect a belief that the evolutionary process must be a slow and gradual one. It is perhaps here that we see the most lasting impact of Darwin’s careful study of Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology while on H.M.S. Beagle. We stress slow and gradual, for it is clear that one could have a slow but non-gradual evolutionary process (perhaps the long periods of evolutionary stasis punctuated by geologically rapid periods of speciation postulated by Eldridge and Gould’s ‘punctuated equilibrium model’ is such); and one could have a rapid but gradual one (for example the process George Gaylord Simpson labeled ‘adaptive radiation’, where a population migrates to a location with a variety of unexploited niches, and rapidly evolves to exploit them). Darwin stresses over and over again that he conceives of natural selection ‘adding up infinitely small variations’, and that he imagines the process of speciation to take place over a very long period of time.

2.3.6 Evolutionary Ethics, Altruism, and Group Selection

Despite Darwin’s effort to eschew discussion of human beings in the Origin (famously writing only that “light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history”; Darwin 1859, 488), he clearly believed that an evolutionary account of the human “moral sense”—as Darwin described it, borrowing from James Mackintosh—could be offered. This account, as a sub-species of what we now would call (though Darwin did not use these terms) altruistic behavior in general (see the entry for biological altruism ), quickly brought Darwin into contact with a host of difficult problems.

In the Descent of Man , he flirted with an explanation of the moral sense in terms of the characteristics not of moral individuals, who would seem to fare less well in the struggle for existence than their egoistic compatriots, but in terms of the characteristics of groups exhibiting moral virtues. In a case of struggle between two tribes of “primeval man,” he writes, the one with “a greater number of courageous, sympathetic, and faithful members, who were always ready to warn each other of danger, to aid and defend each other, this tribe would without doubt succeed best and conquer the other” (Darwin 1871, 1:162). Whether this involves a genuine appeal to what contemporary scholars would call “group selection” (see the entry on units and levels of selection ), or whether this can be described solely in terms of individuals desiring to help themselves and their relatives (i.e., in terms of kin selection) remains the subject of much discussion.

One of the strongest arguments for insisting that ‘Darwinism’ as it is used today is isomorphic to Darwin’s Darwinism, as Gayon puts it, is that each of these questions is still hotly debated, and has been throughout the theory’s history. With all of the amazing changes that have been wrought by the genetic, biochemical, and molecular revolutions, with the development of mathematical models of population genetics and ecology, of sophisticated techniques for both field and laboratory investigation of evolutionary processes, and of cladistic analysis in systematics, it nevertheless remains true that one can find evolutionary biologists who adhere to Darwin’s Darwinism, and are recognized as doing so by both themselves and their critics. In the next section of this article, we will develop a portrait of contemporary Darwinism around each of these contested features.

By the same token, however, Darwinism has evolved. As one example of this truth, think for a moment of contemporary debates about the nature of selection. The problems people had with natural selection in the 19 th century continue to be problematic, but there are a variety of problems that were either not discussed, or discussed very differently, in the 19 th century. Can, and does, natural selection work at levels other than the level of Darwin’s focus, individual organisms; is there a non-vacuous way to formulate the theory abstractly; how are we to understand the relationships between the concepts of fitness, selection and adaptation? How strong are the constraints on the selection process, and what sorts of constraints are there? Are there other motors of evolutionary change besides selection, and if so, how important are they?

3. The Six Core Philosophical Problems Today

Theories need both essences and histories. Stephen Jay Gould (2002, 1)

So reads the heading of the very first section of the first chapter of Gould’s monumental The Structure of Evolutionary Theory . Opening with a subtle reading of an exchange of letters in 1863 between paleontologist Hugh Falconer and Charles Darwin, Gould eventually explains what he has in mind by this section heading:

In short, “The structure of evolutionary theory” combines enough stability for coherence with enough change to keep any keen mind in a perpetual mode of search and challenge. (Gould 2002, 6)

Gould, of course, was both an unabashed admirer of Charles Darwin and one of the most outspoken critics of the ‘neo-Darwinian synthesis’. We will be using both his account of ‘the Essence of Darwinism’ in Part I of this magnum opus and his arguments for a ‘Revised and Expanded Evolutionary Theory’ in its Part II as touchstones and targets.

In the preceding section of this essay, we organized our discussion of the problems that Darwin’s allies had with Darwin’s Darwinism around six issues: [i] the role of chance as a factor in evolutionary theory and the theory’s apparently probabilistic nature; [ii] the nature of selection; [iii] the question of whether selection/adaptation explanations are teleological; [iv] the ontological status of species and the epistemological status of species concepts; [v] the implications of Darwin’s insistence on the slow and gradual nature of evolutionary change; and [vi] the impact of natural selection on ethics and altruistic behavior. We claimed that one very good reason for continuing to characterize one dominant approach to evolutionary biology, that represented by the so-called ‘Neo-Darwinian Synthesis’, as ‘Darwinism’ is that its proponents side with Darwin on these issues, to the extent that Darwin had a clear position on them (and on many less fundamental ones besides). That in itself is remarkable, but it is the more so because the Darwinian position on each of these issues is under as much pressure from non-Darwinian evolutionary biologists today as it was in the wake of the Origin . It is not surprising, given the situation as we have just characterized it, that historians and philosophers of biology have made significant contributions to the discussion, especially in pointing out the underlying philosophical issues and conceptual confusions and ambiguities that stand in the way of resolving the issues at hand, and their historical origins.

It is our conviction that a full understanding of the underlying philosophical disagreements on these questions will only come from a patient historical study of how the ‘Synthesis’ positions on these various issues, and those of their critics, arose. That we cannot do here. Rather, in what follows we will simply be presupposing certain answers to these questions of historical origins. The list of references at the end of this essay includes a number of excellent pieces of work on this subject for those who share our convictions about its importance.

Let us begin with the language Darwin uses when he first sketches his theory at the beginning of the fourth chapter of the Origin :

Can it, then, be thought improbable , seeing that variations useful to man have undoubtedly occurred, that other variations useful in some way to each being in the great and complex battle of life, should sometimes occur in the course of thousands of generations? If such do occur, can we doubt (remembering that many more individuals are born than can possibly survive) that individuals having any advantage, however slight, over others, would have the best chance of surviving and of procreating their kind? (Darwin 1859, 80–81, emphasis added)

Unlike Darwin’s contemporaries, and despite Darwin’s own apparent hesitation, the founders of the synthesis of Mendelian genetics and Darwinian selection theory, Sewall Wright, Ronald Fisher and J. B. S. Haldane, were entirely comfortable with a selection theory formulated in such terms. This was a substantial shift in the presentation of evolution, from a reluctantly probabilistic picture to a thoroughly mathematized, statistical, and probabilistic theory, which occurred in the first several decades after the publication of the Origin (Gayon 1998; Pence 2022).

On this issue, contemporary Darwinism has adopted an approach every bit as ‘chancy’ as that of Darwin. Note one clear statement of the Principle of Natural Selection from the philosophical literature:

If a is better adapted than b to their mutual environment E , then (probably) a will have greater reproductive success than b in E . (Brandon 1990, 11).

The theory trades pervasively in probabilities. Given the fact that evolutionary biologists, especially in so far as they take their cues from population genetics, deal with large populations conceived as ‘gene pools’, and think of evolution as long run changes in the frequencies of different combinations of genes from generation to generation, it is clear that, in the sense of making use of probabilistic or statistical reasoning, chance permeates contemporary Darwinism. The models of population biology provide a means of assigning probabilities to various outcomes, given information about population size, rates of mutation and migration (themselves given as averages and estimates). That is, as Darwin notes, being relatively better adapted increases an organism’s ‘chances’, i.e. increases its probability, of leaving viable offspring. It does not guarantee it. Since natural selection is a stochastic process, Darwinians from Darwin to the present rightly characterize it in terms of influencing the ‘chances’ of a given outcome, given variables such as selection pressure, population size or mutation rates.

Conceptual confusion arises, however, from the fact that ‘chance’ and ‘randomness’ are often contrasted, not with ‘deterministic’ or ’non-probabilistic’ outcomes, but with ‘selected’ outcomes. The evolutionary process, as Darwin understood it, involves both the generation of variation and a process producing a differential perpetuation of variation. One way to think about chance in Darwinism is in relation to a logical space of alternatives, by means of the following variation grid :

On this second sense of chance, what seems to make a theory ‘chancy’ is the fact that generation of variation and perpetuation of variation have both been, for some of these theorists, independent of future utility or fitness. As we see from the grid, a contrast on both scores is found in the evolutionary philosophy of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. Lamarck’s is a materialistic argument against the variation in nature being a matter of chance. On the Lamarckian view, variations arise in an organism as a direct response to environmental stress or demand, giving rise to a stimulus, which in turn elicits a physiological response, which finally can be passed on via reproduction to offspring. Variations are not chance or random, since they are an appropriate response to an environmental stress. Here ‘chance’ signals a lack of relation or connection to adaptive needs .

The concept of ‘random variation’ is today often used as a synonym for ‘chance variation’ in precisely this latter sense. Here are two examples of this notion of chance or randomness as used by contemporary Darwinians.

…mutation is a random process with respect to the adaptive needs of the species. Therefore, mutation alone, uncontrolled by natural selection, would result in the breakdown and eventual extinction of life, not in adaptive or progressive evolution. (Dobzhansky 1970, 65)

Thus the production of variations may be a ‘chance’ process in that there are a number of possible outcomes with assignable probabilities, but it is also a ‘chance’ process in the sense that the probability assignments are not biased by ‘adaptive needs’ or ‘fitness’.

Referring now to perpetuation rather than generation of variation, when John Beatty describes ‘random drift’ as ‘changes in frequencies of variations due to chance’ in the following passage, he presumably has something like a contrast with changes in frequencies due to selection in mind.

In Darwin’s scheme of things, recall, chance events and natural selection were consecutive rather than alternative stages of the evolutionary process. There was no question as to which was more important at a particular stage. But now that we have the concept of random drift taking over where random variation leaves off, we are faced with just such a question. That is, given chance variations, are further changes in the frequencies of those variations more a matter of chance or more a matter of natural selection? (Beatty 1984, 196)

Notice that in the above quote we first get a substitution of ‘random’ for ‘chance’ in the phrases ‘random variation’ and ‘chance variation’, and then at least the suggestion that the concept of ‘random drift’ can be characterized as ‘changes in frequencies of variations due to chance’, where the contrast class consists of similar changes due to natural selection.

With respect to the generation of variation, chapter 5 of On the Origin of Species opens with the following apology:

I have hitherto sometimes spoken as if the variations—so common and multiform in organic beings under domestication, and in a lesser degree in those in a state of nature—had been due to chance. This, of course, is a wholly incorrect expression, but it serves to acknowledge plainly our ignorance of the cause of each particular variation. (Darwin 1859, 131)

Here Darwin is noting that, though to speak of ‘chance variations’ may seem to be citing chance as the cause of the variations, in fact it is simply acknowledging that they ‘appear to have no assignable cause’. But it is important to keep historical context in mind here. Whether Darwin himself ever flirted with the idea of ‘directed’ variation or not, he was acutely aware of two views from which his needed to be distinguished, very different from each other, but both holding to the view that variations arose for a purpose. [ 12 ] The most widely shared alternative was that found in natural theology. To quote the Reverend William Paley’s Natural Theology , regarding a beautiful instance of adaptation: “A conformation so happy was not the gift of chance”. Likewise, among Darwin’s followers, the American botanist Asa Gray, in an essay entitled ‘Natural Selection and Natural Theology’, uses the same contrast to advise Darwin against the notion of ‘chance variation’: “…we should advise Mr. Darwin to assume, in the philosophy of his hypothesis, that variation has been led along certain beneficial lines.”

Gray is here insisting that, since Darwin admits that using the term ‘chance’ merely signals ignorance of the true cause, and since the pervasive adaptations in nature suggest design, Darwin should avoid the suggestion that variations are due to chance in the sense of ‘absence of design’ . This introduces yet a third sense of ‘chance’ that has been instrumental in the interpretation of evolutionary theory (Shanahan 1991, 264).

Darwin, in fact never refers to ‘chance variations’ in the Origin , though occasionally he will note that if a beneficial variation ‘chances [i.e. happens] to appear’, it will be favored by selection (see pp. 37, 82) What Darwin has in mind, however, is clear from his concluding remarks in his chapter on Laws of Variation :

Whatever the cause may be of each slight difference in the offspring from their parents—and a cause of each must exist—it is the steady accumulation, through natural selection, of such differences, when beneficial to the individual, that gives rise to all the more important modifications of structure… (Darwin 1859, 170)

Whatever the cause of the generation of a variation may be, the role of selection is to accumulate those already present variations that happen to be beneficial, a process that, while probabilistic, is not at all independent of fitness (and hence not ‘chancy’ in our second sense). As Beatty put it, the generation of variations and their selection are ‘consecutive’ processes. But to call the generation of variation a ‘chance’ process is to use ‘chance’ in either the second or the third sense, meaning either that such generation is independent of the future utility of variations for the organism, or that it is not by design, not for some end.

There are, therefore, at least three forms of ‘chance’ at play in contemporary evolutionary theory: an invocation of probabilistic or statistical inferences, an invocation of processes that act independently of current or future fitness, and an invocation of the absence of design. To these we might add, as mentioned above, chance as ignorance of causes, and chance as historical contingency, though we lack the space to discuss either of those notions further here, bringing the total to five (see, e.g., Shanahan 1991, 263–267). Eble (1999, 76) drops the notion of probabilistic or statistical inference and adds the idea, less relevant in evolutionary contexts, that ‘chance’ can refer to uncaused events (see analysis in Millstein 2000, 609–613).

One further example can illustrate how all this interacts in the broader context of contemporary evolutionary theory (for more such examples, see the contributions to Ramsey and Pence 2016). Here, a champion of the neutral theory of molecular evolution characterizes his position:

…the great majority of evolutionary changes at the molecular (DNA) level do not result from Darwinian natural selection acting on advantageous mutants but, rather, from random fixation of selectively neutral or very nearly neutral mutants through random genetic drift, which is caused by random sampling of gametes in finite populations. (Kimura 1992, 225)

Here, it will be noticed, the focus is not on the generation of variations but on the perpetuation of variations. The contrast is between a random sampling of gametes that leads to the fixation of selectively neutral alleles and natural selection favoring advantageous variations. That is, the contrast between ‘chance’ and ‘fitness biased’ processes is now being used to distinguish different means of perpetuating certain variations . We are contrasting two sampling processes. Drift samples without concern for adaptation; selection samples discriminately on the basis of differences in fitness. Both samplings are ‘probabilistic’, of course, but that in no way obviates the above contrast.

However, as Beatty has pointed out, it was quite common until fairly recently to characterize natural selection in such a way as to make it almost indistinguishable from random drift (cf. Lennox 1992, Lennox and Wilson 1994). Numerous accounts of fitness characterized the fitness of a genotype as defined by its relative contribution to the gene pool of future generations—the genotype contributing the larger percentage being the fitter. But of course that could easily be the result of a ‘random’—non-fitness biased—sampling process; which organisms would be declared ‘fitter’ by this method might have nothing to do with natural selection. In order to provide a proper characterization of the role of chance in evolutionary change, then, it is critical to provide a more robust and sophisticated account of fitness. (For further information, see the entry on fitness .) This, in turn, requires that we discuss the conceptual network that includes the notions of adaptation and natural selection, to which we will turn shortly.

For now, let us assume that there is a way of characterizing fitness such that there is a substantial empirical question of what role indiscriminate sampling of genotypes (or phenotypes) plays in evolutionary change. This issue was first placed squarely before evolutionary biologists by Sewall Wright in the early 1930s. As Wright pointed out, genes that are neutral with respect to fitness can, due to the stochastic nature of any process of sampling from a population, increase their representation from one generation to the next. The likelihood of this happening goes up as effective population size goes down. Since Wright imagined that a quite typical scenario in evolutionary change was for species to be broken up into relatively small, relatively isolated, populations (or ‘demes’), with significantly more breeding within than between demes, the likelihood that such ‘neutral genotypes’ could become fixed at relatively high levels was significant. Though he gradually toned down this aspect of his work, a significant school of mathematical population geneticists in the 1960s and 70s took these ideas and ran with them, developing a ‘Neutralist’ approach to evolutionary change. This is the position characterized by Kimura (one of its most eloquent defenders) in the passage quoted above. Whether or not such a process plays a significant role in evolution is not a philosophical issue, but it is highly relevant to whether evolutionary biology should be seen as predominantly Darwinian. For if any view is central to Darwinism, it is that the evolutionary process is predominantly guided by the fitness-biasing force of natural selection, acting on variations that arise by chance. It is to natural selection and related concepts that we now turn.

The greatest number of females will, of course, fall to the share of the most vigorous males; and the strongest individuals of both sexes, by driving away the weakest, will enjoy the best food, and the most favourable situations, for themselves and for their offspring. A severe winter, or a scarcity of food, by destroying the weak and the unhealthy, has had all the good effects of the most skilful selection.

The words of Charles Darwin? No; these are the words of John Sebright, penned in The Art of Improving the Breeds of Domestic Animals in 1809, the year of Charles Darwin’s birth and fifty years before On the Origin of Species was published. Darwin refers to this passage in Notebook C of his Species Notebooks. [ 13 ] It will be noticed that Sebright is not discussing domestic selection, but is quite clearly saying that processes leading to differential survival and reproduction in nature will have ‘all the good effects of the most skilful selection’. Darwin, then, did not need to read Malthus to see what is here so plainly and clearly stated—namely, that the struggle for survival in nature will have the same ‘selective’ effects as the actions of the domestic breeder of plants and animals.

As this passage, and the argument of the Origin , shows, ‘natural selection’ began life as the product of analogical reasoning. Sebright sees clearly that the natural processes he is describing will have the same effects as the breeder’s selection, but he is not about to describe those processes as selection processes. Darwin took that step, and Darwinism has followed.

Darwin himself consistently refers to natural selection as a power of preserving advantageous, and eliminating harmful, variations. As noted in the last section, whether a particular variation is advantageous or harmful is, in once sense of that term, a matter of chance; and whether an advantageous variation is actually preserved by selection is, in another sense of the term, also a matter of chance. For Darwinism, selection is the force or power that biases survival and reproduction in favor of advantageous variations, or to look ahead to the next section, of adaptations. It is this that distinguishes selection from drift.

Recent years have seen significant challenges to the idea that this framework is sufficient to explain all evolutionary phenomena, or even to explain an important fraction of evolutionary phenomena of interest. On one side we find partisans of the so-called “extended evolutionary synthesis” (EES), who argue that features like niche construction, developmental bias, phenotypic plasticity, and non-genetic inheritance entail the existence of a theory that at least radically supplements, if not transcends entirely, the Darwinian perspective (for an introduction, see Laland et al. 2014; further references include Pigliucci and Müller 2010; Uller and Laland 2019). On the other side we could put scholars like George C. Williams, who has vigorously defended the explanatory sufficiency of Darwinian selection theory (Williams 1992), or a number of proposals arguing that sufficiently reformulated concepts from “traditional” evolutionary theory can allow it to take on the challenge of the EES without radical changes (e.g., the gene for Lu and Bourrat 2017, or adaptationism for Welch 2017; see also the entries on the gene , adaptationism , and population genetics ).

We can distinguish two broad categories into which we might sort these non-Darwinian amendments: [i] proposed limitations on natural selection as an evolutionary force; and [ii] expansions of the scope of natural selection to include new ‘targets’, ‘processes’ or ‘mechanisms’, and ‘levels’. It will be noted that in neither case is it obvious that the theory itself requires modification in the face of such challenges—in principle these might be nothing more than challenges to the theory’s range of application . However, if it turned out that most evolutionary change could be explained without recourse to natural selection, this would be grounds for arguing that evolutionary biology was no longer Darwinian. And if it turned out that the theory of natural selection could only be integrated with our new understanding of the processes of inheritance and development by a wholesale modification of its foundations, it might be best to see the new theory as a modified descendent of Darwinism, rather than Darwinism itself. Theories may need essences, as Gould claims; but if what is fundamental to the theory has changed, then so has its essence. To borrow a phrase from Paul Griffiths, perhaps it is not that theories need histories and essences—perhaps what they need are historical essences .

Alfred Russell Wallace regularly urged Darwin to jettison the term ‘selection’ as misleadingly anthropomorphic, and substitute Herbert Spencer’s ‘survival of the fittest’. Darwin went halfway—in later editions he added ‘or Survival of the Fittest’ to ‘Natural Selection’ in the title of chapter 4. As the theory developed in the mid-20 th century, the expression ‘survival of the fittest’ was gradually eliminated from any serious presentation of Darwinian selection theory. On the other hand, the concept of ‘fitness’ has played a prominent, and problematic, role. In the mathematical models used in population genetics, ‘fitness’ refers either to the abilities of the different genotypes in a population to leave descendants, or to the measures of those abilities, represented by the variable W . Here is a rather standard textbook presentation of the relevant concepts:

In the neo-Darwinian approach to natural selection that incorporates consideration of genetics, fitness is attributed to particular genotypes. The genotype that leaves the most descendants is ascribed the fitness value W =1, and all other genotypes have fitnesses, relative to this, that are less than 1. … Fitness measures the relative evolutionary advantage of one genotype over another, but it is often important also to measure the relative penalties incurred by different genotypes subject to natural selection. This relative penalty is the corollary of fitness and is referred to by the term selection coefficient . It is given the symbol s and is simply calculated by subtracting the fitness from 1, so that: s = 1 − W . (Skelton 1993, 164)

The problem lies in the fact that the concept of fitness plays dual roles that are instructively conflated in this quotation. For when fitnesses are viewed as measures of differential abilities of organisms with different genotypes to leave different numbers of offspring, the language of fitness encourages us to suppose that ‘fitness’ refers to the relative selective advantages of genotypes. On the other hand, if ‘fitness’ simply refers to the measure of reproductive success, it is a quantitative representation of small scale evolutionary change in a population, and leaves entirely open the question of the causes of the change. But then the assumed connections among the concepts of fitness, adaptation and natural selection are severed. ‘Selection coefficients’ may have nothing to do with selection; what W represents may have nothing to do with selective advantage.

There is, however, a way of formulating the theory in its modern guise which maintains an essentially Darwinian character. Since there are a number of confirmed ways in which natural populations can evolve in the absence of natural selection, and since balancing selection, i.e. countervailing selection forces, may prevent a population from evolving in its presence, it is clear that establishing, by measuring different reproductive rates among its members, that the genetic make-up of a population has changed does not establish that natural selection was the source of that change; nor does the fact that no change has been measured establish that natural selection is not operative. Population genetics and its associated models should be treated as the ‘kinematics’, not the ‘dynamics’ of evolutionary processes (on this distinction, see also Pence 2021). That is, it is a way of establishing that a population either is or is not in equilibrium, and it provides sophisticated tools for measuring rates of change in a population across generations. Moreover, like the kinematics of any physical theory, if it establishes cross-generational change, it also tells us that there are causes to be found—the detailed contours of those measures may even provide suggestions as to where to look for those causes. What it cannot do on its own is provide knowledge of the forces at work. To use language introduced by Elliott Sober, fitness, unlike natural selection, is causally inert . (For further information, see the entry on population genetics .)

That means that, as valuable as population genetics is, it should not be equated with the theory of natural selection. Too often in both biological presentations of the theory and philosophical discussions of it, this is forgotten. For example:

Most people are familiar with the basic theory of natural selection. Organisms vary in a heritable fashion. Some variants leave more offspring than others; their characteristics, therefore, are represented at a greater frequency in the next generation. (Wilson 1984, 273)

This is a presentation of ‘the basic theory of natural selection’ that makes no reference to natural selection at all!

Natural selection, if it is to resemble the Darwinian concept that bears that name, must be reserved for reference to an interaction between a variable, heritable feature of an organic system and the environment of that system . That interaction may or may not change the proportions of those features across generations, and those proportions may change for reasons other than those interactions. But a plausible natural selection hypothesis must posit some such interaction. (Whether this interaction is accurately described as causal is another much-debated topic in recent years; see Pence 2021 for a high-level summary.) On this issue we will give the last word to Stephen Jay Gould:

…when we consider natural selection as a causal process, we can only wonder why so many people confused a need for measuring the results of natural selection by counting the differential increase of some hereditary attribute (bookkeeping) with the mechanism that produces relative reproductive success (causality). (Gould 2003, 619)

The concept of natural selection has to this point been presented broadly because of the other two critical questions surrounding the contemporary Darwinian concept of natural selection that we mentioned earlier—questions having to do with possible limiting constraints on natural selection and about the sorts of objects that can be viewed as appropriate organismic/environmental ‘interactors’ in the selection process.

If we suppose that for Darwin natural selection was almost exclusively thought of as an interaction between individual organisms and their organic and inorganic environments, then we can see two challenges to Darwinism today with respect to levels of selection. There are those, such as G. C. Williams, Richard Dawkins (1976) and, more recently, J. Arvid Ågren (2021), who argue that selection is always and only of genes. Here is a clear statement:

These complications [those introduced by organism/environment interactions] are best handled by regarding individual [organismic] selection, not as a level of selection in addition to that of the gene, but as the primary mechanism of selection at the genic level. (Williams 1993, 16)

Dawkins’ preferred mode for making the same point is to refer to organisms—or interactors—as the vehicles of their genes, in fact vehicles constructed by the genome for its own perpetuation.

The original impulse for this approach, especially clear in Williams’ classic Adaptation and Natural Selection (1966), was philosophical—it was to use a sort of Ockham’s razor strategy against group selection hypotheses, showing that alleged group selection effects could be explained by explanations operating at the level of the genome (an approach more recently taken by the controversial Nowak et al. 2010). Throughout that book, selection is always said to be of individual alleles, regardless of the role environments at various levels may play in the process.

This view has been extensively challenged by philosophers of biology on both methodological and conceptual grounds, though there are, among philosophers, enthusiastic supporters (cf. Dennett 1995). In all the give and take, it is seldom noticed that defenders of this view claim to be carrying the Darwinian flag (Gayon 1998 and Gould 2003 are exceptions). Yet it is certainly not a position that Darwin would recognize—and not merely because he lacked a coherent theory of the units of inheritance. It is not a Darwinian view because for Darwin it was differences in the abilities of organisms at various stages of development to respond to the challenges of life that had causal primacy in the explanation of evolutionary change. Among evolutionary biologists from the ‘neo-Darwinian synthesis’ on, it is those who stress the role of organisms in populations interacting differentially to ever-variable ecological conditions in causing changes in the gene pools of those populations who are the card-carrying Darwinians. Such a “return of the organism” (Nicholson 2014) in evolutionary explanations marks a profound link between proponents of an extended evolutionary synthesis (e.g., Walsh 2015) and Darwin himself.

Darwinism also has challenges from the opposite direction. In the 1970s a number of biologists working in the fields of paleontology and systematics challenged the Neo-Darwinian dogma that you could account for ‘macro-evolution’ by means of long term extrapolation from micro-evolution. Gould, in particular, opens Part II of The Structure of Evolutionary Theory ( Towards a Revised and Expanded Evolutionary Theory ), with a chapter entitled ‘Species as Individuals in the Hierarchical Theory of Selection’. That chapter title combines two conceptually distinct theses that connect debates about the fundamentals of natural selection to patterns in macroevolution: first, the thesis defended by Michael Ghiselin (Ghiselin 1997) and championed and refined by David Hull (Hull 2001), that species are, in a robust sense of the term, ‘individuals’; and second, that there may well be selection among groups of organisms, qua groups (see section 3.6 ). These debates over the importance of selective and non-selective processes and the relationship between these mechanisms of biological change and broader patterns of diversification and adaptation comprise some of the most important and heated discussions currently underway in evolutionary theory.

Early in the Introduction to On the Origin of Species , Darwin observes that the conclusion that each species had descended from others “even if well founded, would be unsatisfactory, until it could be shown how the innumerable species inhabiting this world have been modified so as to acquire that perfection of structure and co-adaptation which most justly excites our admiration” (Darwin 1859, 3). One might say this was the central promise of Darwinism—to account for both phylogenic continuity and adaptive differentiation by means of the same principles; or as Darwin puts it, to integrate in one theory the supposed opposition between Unity of Type and Conditions of Existence.

But it is here that even the most sympathetic of Darwin’s theistic supporters were forced to qualify their support for the theory of descent with modification by means of natural selection. In Darwin’s day the reactions of Asa Gray and John Herschel are perhaps the most interesting in this respect. Both men saw in Darwin’s theory a way to account for ‘that mystery of mysteries,’ the regular appearance of new species by means of natural, or as they might say, ‘intermediate’ causes. However both instinctively recoiled from the irreducible and central role of ‘chance’ in the theory. They did not, but easily could have, said ‘God does not play dice with the universe.’ But as Darwin stated repeatedly, if gently, to Gray—if God ordained that variations should be along beneficial lines, natural selection would be redundant. Moreover, the evidence from the study of variation in domestic and natural populations put the lie to any claim that God directs all or most variation along beneficial lines. Darwinian selection theory is a two-step process—the production of variation unrelated to the adaptive requirements of the organism, and differential perpetuation of those variations that serve adaptive needs. Again, a theory of evolution that could not be so described would not be a Darwinian theory.

The nature of ‘selection explanations’ is a topic to which much philosophical attention has been devoted in recent years. Here we want to focus on only one important question—to what extent is the teleological appearance of such explanations simply that, an appearance masking a causal process in which goals play no role?

The appearance of teleology is certainly present in Darwinian explanations, and has been since Darwin spoke of natural selection working solely for the good of each being. The appearance of teleology stems from the ease with which both evolutionary biology and common sense take it for granted that animals and plants have the adaptations they do because of some benefit or advantage to the organism provided by those adaptations.

This is a hotly contested question, and we will here simply sketch a case that selective explanations of adaptations are robustly teleological. The interested reader may want to refer to the literature on this question referred to in the discussion and listed in the list of readings provided at the end of this entry. The serious philosophical issue can be put simply and directly: in selection explanations of adaptations, are the functions served by adaptations a central and irreducible feature of the explanans in such explanations? If the answer is yes, the explanations are teleological. [ 14 ]

A good place to begin is with a simple, yet realistic, example. In research carried out over many years and combining painstaking field work and laboratory experimentation, John Endler was able to demonstrate that the color patterns of males in the guppy populations he was studying in rivers feeding into the southern Caribbean were a consequence of a balance between mate selection and predator selection. To take one startling example, he was able to test and confirm a hypothesis that a group of males, with a color pattern that matched that of the pebbles on the bottoms of the streams and ponds they populated except for bright red spots, have that pattern because a common predator in those populations, a prawn, is color blind for red. Red spots did not put their possessors at a selective disadvantage, and were attractors for mates (Endler 1983, 173–190). We may refer to this pattern of coloration as a complex adaptation that serves the functions of predator avoidance and mate attraction. But what role do those functions play in explaining why it is that the males in this population have the coloration they do?

This color pattern is an adaptation, as that term is used in Darwinism, only if it is a product of natural selection (Williams 1966, 261; Brandon 1985; Burian 1983). In order for this to be true, there must be an array of color variation available in the genetic/developmental resources of the species wider than this particular pattern but including this pattern. Which factors are critical, then, in producing differential survival and reproduction of guppies with this particular pattern? The answer would seem to be the value-consequences this pattern has compared to others available in promoting viability and reproduction. In popular parlance (and the parlance favored by Darwin), this color pattern is good for the male guppies that have it, and for their male offspring, and that is why they have it (Binswanger 1990; Brandon 1985; Lennox 2002). This answer strengthens the ‘selected effects’ or ‘consequence etiology’ accounts of selection explanations by stressing that selection ranges over value differences. The reason for one among a number of color patterns having a higher fitness value has to do with the value of that pattern relative to the survival and reproductive success of its possessors.

Selection explanations are, then, a particular kind of teleological explanation, an explanation in which that for the sake of which a trait is possessed, its valuable consequence , accounts for the trait’s differential perpetuation and maintenance in the population.

In listing the topics we would discuss under the heading of neo-Darwinism, we distinguished the question of the ontological status of species from the epistemological status of the species concept . Though they are closely related questions, it is important to keep them distinct. As will become clear as we proceed, this distinction is rarely honored. Moreover, it is equally important to distinguish the species concept from the categories of features that belong in a definition of species (Rheins 2011). Advances in our theoretical understanding may lead us to reconsider the sorts of attributes that are most important for determining whether a group of organisms is a species, and thus whether it deserves to be assigned a name at that taxonomic level. It should not be assumed that such changes constitute a change in the species concept, though at least some such changes may lead us to restrict or expand the range of taxa that are designated as species. In his contribution to the Neo-Darwinian Synthesis, Systematics and the Origin of Species , Ernst Mayr titled chapter five ‘The Systematic Categories and the New Species Concept’. Recall that Darwin made a point of treating the species category as continuous with ‘well-marked variety’ and ‘sub-species’, and made the radical suggestion that its boundaries would be just as fluid. Without explicitly acknowledging Darwin, Mayr takes the same tack, discussing ‘individual variants’ and ‘sub-species’ as a preliminary to discussing the species concept. Mayr notes that for someone studying the evolutionary process, speciation is a critical juncture; “…his interpretation of the speciation process depends largely on what he considers to be the final stage of this process, the species.” (Mayr 1942/1982, 113) With this in mind, he offers the following definition, the so-called ‘biological species concept’ (BSC):

Species are groups of actually or potentially interbreeding natural populations, which are reproductively isolated from other such groups (Mayr 1942/1982, 120; 1976, 518)

Mayr was well aware of the limitations of this definition, and treated it somewhat as a ‘regulative ideal’. Dobzhansky in 1937 gave what he claimed to be a definition of species, but which seems, as Mayr noted (Mayr 1976, 481), much more a definition of speciation :

…that stage of evolutionary process, “at which the once actually or potentially interbreeding array of forms becomes segregated in two or more separate arrays which are physiologically incapable of interbreeding.” (312)

Simpson (1943) and others built even more historicity into the concept. These are all, of course, intended as definitions of the species category , and they attempt to provide a test (or a ‘yardstick’: Mayr 1976, 479) that in principle will permit a researcher to decide whether a group of individuals should all be identified by a single species-level concept such as ‘homo sapiens’. The test for species membership is the capacity to interbreed; the test distinguishing two species is incapacity to interbreed. Dobzhansky makes the importance of this test transparent—the transition from a single interbreeding population to two reproductively isolated ones is the process of speciation.

Now in each of these definitions, little attention is paid to the actual methods used by taxonomists and systematists in differentiating between varieties of a species and distinct species, something to which Darwin gave a great deal of attention. Darwin’s apparent nominalism regarding the species concept likely stemmed from his close attention to his own taxonomic practices and those of other specialists.

Mayr, on the contrary, relates different approaches to the species concept to the philosophical distinction between essentialism and nominalism (for the history of this argumentative move, see Witteveen 2015; 2016). He associates what he calls essentialism (and what we called above “realism” about species) with the view that a species concept refers to a universal or type. This view of the referent of the concept leads to the Typological Species Concept, which he traces from Linnaeus back to Plato and Aristotle, and which he claims ‘is now universally abandoned’ (1976, 516). It is worth noting that serious doubt has been cast both on the historical and the philosophical credentials of Mayr’s ‘Typological Species Concept’ (see, e.g. Lennox, 1987; repr. in Lennox 2001b; Winsor 2001, 2006; Walsh 2006; Wilkins 2009). At the opposite extreme is nominalism, which combines the view that only individuals exist in nature and that species are concepts invented for the purpose of grouping these individuals collectively.

Mayr claims that his Biological Species Concept (BSC) is an advance on both; individual species members are objectively related to one another not by a shared relation to a type but by causal and historical relationships to one another. He can thus be understood as arguing for a new, objective way of understanding the epistemological grounds for grouping individuals into species. This new way of grouping stresses historical, genetic and various ecological relationships among the individuals as the grounds for determining species membership. His claim is that this is more reliable and objective than similarities of phenotypic characteristics. This makes sense of the importance he eventually places on the fact the BSC defines species relationally:

…species are relationally defined. The word species corresponds very closely to other relational terms such as, for instance, the word brother . … To be a different species is not a matter of degree of difference but of relational distinctness. (Mayr 1976, 518)

Mayr has in mind that brothers may or may not look alike; the question of whether two people are brothers is determined by their historical and genetic ties to a common ancestry. Notice, however, that this is a claim about which characteristics, among the many that they have, should be taken most seriously in determining the applicability to them of the concept ‘brother’. That is, it is a defense of a sort of essentialism.

A number of critics have pointed out that essentialism need not be committed to ‘types’ understood as universalia in re ; and on certain accounts of essences any species taxon that meets the standards of BSC does so in virtue of certain essential (though relational and historical) properties. At one extreme, Michael Ghiselin and David Hull have argued that this causal/historical structure of species provides grounds, at least within evolutionary biology, for considering species to be individuals. [ 15 ] Organisms are not members of a class or set, but ‘parts’ of a phylogenetic unit. Taking a very different tack, Denis Walsh has recently argued that a form of ‘evolutionary essentialism,’ bearing a striking resemblance to the essentialism of Aristotle’s zoological work, is implicit in the work of a number of evolutionary developmental theorists (Walsh, 2006).

A critical issue in this debate over the account of the species concept most appropriate for Darwinism is the extent to which the process of biological classification—taxonomy—should be informed by advances in biological theory. Besides those already discussed, the moderate pluralism associated with Robert Brandon and Brent Mischler or the more radical pluralism defended by Philip Kitcher, argues that different explanatory aims within the biological sciences will require different criteria for determining whether a group constitutes a species (perhaps, controversially, including non-epistemic value commitments; see Garnett and Christidis 2017; Conix 2019). Cladists, on the other hand, employ strictly defined phylogenetic tests to determine species rank (see Rheins 2011).

Unlike many of the other topics that define the history of Darwinism, there is no clear-cut position on this question that can be identified as ‘Darwinian’ or ‘neo-Darwinian’. In a recent collection of papers defending most of the alternatives currently being advanced (Ereshefsky 1992), our suspicion is that virtually every author in that collection would identify himself as Darwinian. This may be because, as different as they are, a number of positions currently being defended have their roots in Darwin’s own theory and practice (see Beatty 1985; reprinted in Ereshefsky 1992).

Contemporary debates over the tempo and mode of evolutionary change often travel with those concerning the role of “non-Darwinian” processes in evolutionary biology, as discussed in section 3.2 . As was argued above, the classical Darwinist position on questions of tempo and mode is usually taken to be a strict gradualism, with natural selection slowly pushing populations toward adaptive peaks (see the entry on adaptationism ). From Darwin’s day to our own, a number of processes other than natural selection that significantly impact the speed and direction of population change have been increasingly emphasized. The oldest among them was genetic drift , which draws our attention toward selectively neutral (sometimes, as we saw above, described as “random”) change in populations. If one emphasizes processes of this sort, evolution might still be gradual, but it would not necessarily, or even not usually, be adaptively directed.

The same is true for the increasing interaction between evolution and developmental biology , or evo-devo. If processes like phenotypic plasticity, in which an organism with a static genotype may exhibit radically different phenotypes as a developmental response to environmental influences, are extremely prevalent, then the kind of gradual walk toward an adaptive peak which it is clear Darwin had in mind would be regularly punctuated by fits and starts of various kinds, as new portions of evolutionary space became available as a result of developmental novelty. In turn, this could lead to the non-gradual (potentially even non-Darwinian) pattern of punctuated equilibrium , Stephen Jay Gould’s term for this oscillation between periods of stasis and rapid change across the history of the tree of life (see the entry on macroevolution ). Examples of this sort could be multiplied (e.g., biased mutation, epigenetics), though we lack the space to do so here.

To be sure, it is not clear that Darwin himself would have considered any of these to be “anti-Darwinian” approaches. As counter-examples to Darwin’s gradualism accumulated in his own day, especially those driven by (misplaced, we now know) concerns about the age of the earth like those raised by William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, Darwin began to increase the importance of “sports” in later revisions of his works, large variations that could cause brief periods of rapid phenotypic change. That said, when a reference is made in contemporary work to the “Darwinian” position on tempo and mode, it is clearly his early, extreme gradualism that authors have in mind.

In-depth discussions of the contemporary state of the field on evolutionary ethics and biological altruism would take us too far afield for our purposes here, and each is the subject of a separate article in this encyclopedia (see morality and evolutionary biology ; biological altruism ). In short, ethical behavior seems to pose at least two prima facie challenges for evolutionary explanations. First, how could genuinely altruistic behavior, which seems to involve organisms making sacrifices for others, evolve under the strict optimizing regime of natural selection? And second, what is the relationship between evolutionary explanations of our mental and perceptual capacities and our understanding of moral knowledge? Must evolutionary theory undermine or “debunk” any claims to true moral beliefs (see the entry on moral epistemology )?

It is worth underlining here, however, that debate around Darwin’s own position on these issues has turned on whether or not Darwin was genuinely offering us a “group-selection” explanation for moral traits in human beings (e.g., Ruse and Richards 2016). This question, in addition to testing the limits of our ability to interpret precious little source material found in Darwin’s own writings, is difficult also because of the host of issues that might be implicated in the effort to explicate just what we mean by “a group-selection explanation” of a particular phenomenon.

As we mentioned in section 3.2 above, in linking the question of species’ metaphysical individuality to the hierarchy of natural selection, Stephen Jay Gould offers us a window onto the conceptual complexity to which this debate can lead. His title exemplifies one approach to group selection—the unit of selection is always the individual, but there are individuals other than individual organisms that are subject to selection. A very different result emerges if one assumes that groups of organisms such as demes, kin-groups, or species, though not individuals, are nevertheless subject to selection. Adding to the conceptual complexity, some researchers propose that the term ‘group selection’ be restricted to the process whereby group-level traits provide advantages to one group over another, in which case there are strict conditions delimiting cases of group selection. Others define group selection primarily in terms of group level effects . Thus a debate analogous to that earlier discussed regarding the definitions of ‘fitness’ emerges here—by group selection do we mean a distinct type of causal process that needs to be conceptually distinguished from selection at the level of individual organism or gene, or do we merely mean a tendency within certain populations for some well-defined groups to displace others over time? (For further discussion, see Sterelny and Griffiths 1999, 151–179; Hull 2001, 49–90; and see the entry on levels and units of selection .)

We hope that this survey has demonstrated, first and foremost, the rich past and present of philosophical reflections both about and inspired by Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. Furthermore, as we have seen, Darwin’s own positions and works remain touchstones for such reflections, not only because he was the theory’s first proponent, but also because his positions still offer us a useful frame of reference as well as a host of sophisticated insights. To be sure, the philosophy and practice of biology have advanced significantly in the intervening nearly two hundred years since Darwin’s first notebooks on natural selection. But if history is any guide, considering whether and how these innovations depart from Darwin’s own views on the subject will be a fruitful enterprise well into the theory’s next century.

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Charles Darwin’s Life

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Charles Darwin: Primary Sources

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Charles Darwin’s Context

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The Evolution of Darwinism

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Philosophy and Evolutionary Theory

• Brandon, R. N., 1996, Concepts and Methods in Evolutionary Biology , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Burian, R. M., 2005, The Epistemology of Development, Evolution, and Genetics , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Godfrey-Smith, P., 2009, Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 2014, The Philosophy of Biology , Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Hull, D. and Ruse, M. (eds.), 1998, The Philosophy of Biology , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Lloyd, E., 1994, The Structure and Confirmation of Evolutionary Theory , 2 nd edition Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Okasha, S., 2006, Evolution and the Levels of Selection , Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• –––, 2019, Philosophy of Biology: A Very Short Introduction , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Sober, E., 1984, The Nature of Selection: Evolutionary Theory in Philosophical Focus , Cambridge MA: MIT Press.
• ––– (ed.), 1994, Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology , 2 nd edition, Cambridge MA: MIT Press.
• –––, 2008, Evidence and Evolution: The Logic Behind the Science , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• –––, 2024, The Philosophy of Evolutionary Theory: Concepts, Inferences & Probabilities , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Smith, David Livingstone (ed.), 2017, How Biology Shapes Philosophy: New Foundations for Naturalism , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

Though there are an abundance of web sites on Darwinism, the three most useful sites meeting the highest of academic standards are listed below. The first is the official site for the publication of material in the extensive Darwin Archives at Cambridge University, but has grown to become the default site for Darwin texts and related literature as well. The second is the official site for on-line publication of Darwin’s extensive correspondence. The third site is a very good starting point amd links to sites related to Charles Darwin’s historical context.

• Complete World of Charles Darwin Online
• Darwin Correspondence Project
• Victorian Science: An Overview , The Victorian Web (funded by the University Scholars Program, National University of Singapore)

adaptationism | biology: philosophy of | creationism | developmental biology: evolution and development | essential vs. accidental properties | evolution | fitness | -->individuals and individuation --> | laws of nature | natural selection | natural selection: units and levels of | scientific explanation | Scottish Philosophy: in the 18th Century | Scottish Philosophy: in the 19th century | species | teleology: teleological notions in biology | Whewell, William

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Home — Essay Samples — Sociology — Social Darwinism — Social Darwinism And White Man’s Burden

Social Darwinism and White Man's Burden

• Categories: Rudyard Kipling Social Darwinism

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Social Darwinism Essay

Social Darwinism is a 19th century idea that arose as a corollary of the theory of evolution. Social Darwinists claim that just as natural selection works on the individual level, so too does it affect human society and civilization. Social Darwinism gained immense popularity in industrial nations during the late 1800s and early 1900s as an explanation for poverty and social connection. Social Darwinism influenced many fields of thought, most notably sociology and economics. Social Darwinism remains popular in these two disciplines even today.

Social Darwinism arose out of the writings of Charles Darwin concerning his observations while aboard the H.M.S Beagle on his famous voyage that began in 1831. During this trip, he saw many different species of animals competing for limited supplies of food and water which often resulted in death shortly after shortages occurred. Many people called this struggle for survival “natural selection” or the “survival of the fittest.”

People who agreed with Social Darwinist principles believed that humans did not escape natural laws governing individual rights, self-interest, competition, and private property. Social Darwinists also believed that poverty was a natural state of affairs because the poor were less fit to survive than the rich, who had mastered the means of existence already. Social Darwinists concluded that helping the poor would only interfere with “natural selection” and make them more likely to reproduce their kind, ultimately worsening society’s problems.

Social Darwinism has had many impacts on different fields of study including sociology, philosophy, economics, anthropology, and even criminology through its influence on eugenics. Social Darwinism influenced both Karl Marx and D. Rockefeller because it reinforced their ideas of Social Evolution, the idea that human societies are progressing toward some sort of Utopian society, just as Charles Darwin argued with biological evolution. Social Darwinism affected philosophy by influencing both John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer in their beliefs concerning individualism and Social Darwinist thought influenced economic theory through William Graham Sumner’s writings on Social Reform.

Social Darwinism also influenced many people’s opinions about crime because of its eugenics principles which led to the sterilization of mentally disabled criminals. Social Darwinists believed that “the criminal class” was reproducing at a much faster rate than the middle-class or working-class classes because they were less fit for survival.

Social Darwinism maintains the idea of natural selection, but Social Darwinists feel that this process applies to all living things. Social Darwinists think that “in a social context, competition for limited resources is inevitable and beneficial”(1). Social Darwinist use Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution as a basis to legitimize their ideas on how society should be run. Social Darwinism strives to improve society by allowing it to be governed by laws of nature instead of government institutions.

In Human Nature and Conduct John Dewey says, “The modern doctrine of evolution…has been pressed into the service of those who would have liked already in earlier days to discredit or ignore some elements inherent in human life as actually lived. (507)” Social Darwinists feel that natural selection works in society, and the strong survive while the weak perish. Social Darwinism justifies their beliefs by using Social Darwinists believe creatures are more advanced than others of different species.

Social Darwinists believe some races are stronger than other races, some nationalities are more superior to others; they also think men are stronger then women; Social Darwinists use Charles Darwin’s theories of evolution to justify their beliefs on race, gender, and nationality. Social Darwinism was used as “scientific” justification for imperialism (1). Social Evolution is the process through which social institutions change over time(2). A question about Social Evolution would be: how did it come to be?

How has it evolved? Social evolution is history, Social Darwinism is the idea that Social Evolution follows natural selection. Social evolution says that “the world changes through time because of social interactions between human beings”(2). Social Darwinists believe that Social Darwinist believe people are constantly in competition with one another. Social Selection Theory states “that organisms exhibiting more adaptive traits will be more likely to survive and reproduce than organisms exhibiting less adaptive traits” (1).

Social selection theory states “it can produce effects on populations over many generations(3)”. Charles Darwin applied Social Selection Theory to society in his book On the Origin of Species, but Herbert Spencer took hold of it and applied it not only to humans but also animals. Social selection theory tries to explain Social Selection Theory does not just apply to humans but also animals. Social Selection Theory is Social Darwinism. Social Evolution is Social Darwinism’s answer to “How did society come to be this way? How has it evolved?

Social evolution says that “the world changes through time because of social interactions between human beings”(2). Charles Darwin first proposed his theories of natural selection in his book On the Origin of Species, which was published on November 24th 1859 (3). Herbert Spencer coined the term “Social Darwinism” and used Charles Darwins’s theory of natural selection as a basis for how society should be run (4). Herbert Spencer coined the term “Social Darwinism” and used Charles Darwins’s theory of natural selection as a basis for how society should be run (4).

Social Darwinism argues that in the Social Jungle, the competition is among societies. The Social Darwinist perspective grew out of a nineteenth-century intellectual debate about how to explain poverty in industrializing societies. It seemed obvious to many people that poverty was caused by laziness and immorality among the poor themselves. Social Darwinists believed that poverty was instead best explained as natural selection in action; it reflected unfitness for life.

Social conditions like good health, wealth, and education were signs of fitness; these characteristics helped people survive and reproduce under any social conditions they might encounter (Brown). Social Darwinism is based on the idea of ‘survival of the fittest’. Spencer used his ideas to create Social Darwinism which teaches that all organisms evolve randomly, but human society evolves by natural selection. Social Darwinism uses Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection and applies it to society.

Social Darwinism is the idea that only the most well-adapted individuals in a population will survive and reproduce. Social Darwinists believe competition is natural because everyone wants to survive. The Social Darwinist perspective grew out of a nineteenth-century intellectual debate about how to explain poverty in industrializing societies (Social Darvinim). The Social Darwinism theory argues that in the Social Jungle, competition is among societies rather than individual organisms within a species.

It holds that this competition leads to social progress. The Social Darwinist perspective fell into disfavor during the Nazi era, when Hitler used Social Darwinism as an excuse to kill Jews and other “unfit” individuals. Social Darwinism is not the same as Social Evolution, which is different from Social Darwinism in that Social Evolution focuses on cooperation rather than competition among societies (Social Evo).

Social Darwinism is a science based theory used by Social Darwinists. The criteria for being Social Darwinist are not really clear because they have two perspectives to their belief system one being natural selection another being survival of the fittest. The basis behind Social Darwinism is Charles Robert Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection where he argued that only well-adapted organisms survive and reproduce, leading over time to an increase in the prevalence of those traits.

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