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Computing and commuting and missed the edit summary: sorry. RV "socialism" as having the wrong-in fact nearly the opposite-meaning.-- Old Moonraker ( talk) 15:04, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
This article needs better clarification to differentiate between the individualist form of social Darwinism and the collectivist form of social Darwinism. Darwinian Collectivism or Reform Darwinism, rather than Social Darwinism or Darwinian Individualism, are more accurate terms for Hitler's Eugenics which is the planned state control of human breeding—a program that no proponent of laissez-faire could consistently endorse. I may tackle this later if nobody gets to it. Origins of the Myth of Social Darwinism: The Ambiguous Legacy of Richard Hofstadter’s Social Darwinism in American Thought (2009), p, 37-51 and Mistaking Eugenics for Social Darwinism: Why Eugenics is Missing from the History of American Economics (2005)-- Trueliberal ( talk) 17:28, 25 February 2011 (UTC)
The Idiot's Guide to world history was written by a high school teacher without a PhD (says Amazon.com) and does not meet minimal standards in WP:RS (rule is "we only publish the opinions of reliable authors") -- please use some of the powerful books that are listed in the article. Rjensen ( talk) 18:53, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
The opening paragraph seems quite confusing, especially the first sentence. It seems to me that it should begin with a simple definition. Something like: Social Darwinism is a belief, popular in the late Victorian era in England, America, and elsewhere, which states that the strongest or fittest should survive and flourish in society, while the weak and unfit should be allowed to die.
As it is currently worded it almost sounds like the opposite is true. "Coined by those opposed to survival of the fittest" - ?? I get what you're going for, but that shouldn't be in the opening paragraph. Jasonnewyork ( talk) 15:54, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
Bold text==Nazi atrocities== I have specified what "atrocities" are referred to in the lead since they were not so described before. Peterlewis ( talk) 16:25, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
I can tell you that social darwinism is the oposite of nazism in the nazi system the state decides who lives or dies in social darwinism success or failure happens naturally acording to each individual and their work ethic or lack of one Irishfrisian ( talk) 23:44, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
Just reading the last sentence in the introduction, I think that's poorly written. My understanding is:
- one *can* start with darwins theory and apply it to society to arrive at social darwinism, in a strictly technical, amoral context, but
- one *does not necessarily* have to arrive at social darwinism from this starting point (per the first reference), and quite distinctly:
- if one introduces the entire dimension of morality, then one cannot use darwinism as a moral justification for the consequences of social darwinism (hence the invocation of the naturalistic fallacy).
The problem is, a cursory reading of that might easily go like:
- scholars have said that social darwinism doesn't follow from darwin's theory, and - using darwin's theory to arrive at social darwinism is a naturalistic fallacy, and - (following the link to naturalistic fallacy) this is probably a 'formal fallacy', ergo, the link between social darwinism and darwin's theory has been formally shown to be false.
Now, that's a completely incorrect statement, but it's a bit too easy to misapprehend (I know, because that's exactly how I just read it, until I did a double take and read around it a bit). I think this needs to be much more clearly worded, either to make it clear that the reference to 'naturalistic fallacy' is only applicable if you introduce a 'moral' dimension to the equation, which is quite aside from a logical progression or commonality between the two concepts, or else and maybe better just to remove the reference to avoid muddying the waters for the casual reader.
thoughts? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.176.223.225 ( talk) 21:55, 30 November 2011 (UTC)
The second paragraph is vague and misleading viz. -
In sociology it has been defined as a theory of social evolution which asserts that "There are underlying, and largely irresistible, forces acting in societies which are like the natural forces that operate in animal and plant communities. One can therefore formulate social laws similar to natural ones. These social forces are of such a kind as to produce evolutionary progress through the natural conflicts between social groups. The best-adapted and most successful social groups survive these conflicts, raising the evolutionary level of society generally (the 'survival of the fittest')."[5]
What is the "the evolutionary level of society" and can it be "raised"?
-- Craigmac41 ( talk) 21:06, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
Under the heading "Germany" this sentence appears: Social evolution theories in Germany gained large popularity in the 1860s and had a strong antiestablishment connotation first. I was going to clean this up to remove the trailing "first". But then realised I didn't know what exactly the author meant. Was it: "In the first place..." (i.e. "initially")? Or was it: "Firstly..." (i.e. "mainly")? 194.75.11.41 ( talk) 16:17, 23 April 2017 (UTC)
The following sentence of Darwin in the article requires explanation, for the article to explain social darwinism, rather than promote it.
"Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature"
Here Darwin commits the essential social darwinist error to make matters of good and bad, into matters of fact. A measurable good (noble) nature, and a measurable bad nature.
Darwin does not subjectively acknowlege any spiritual domain, therefore he is forced to make all issues of the worth of people into issues of measurable facts. Darwin wrote a book about emotions in which he objectifies all emotions, discounting the idea that love and hate are only subjectively identified, and not measurable. Morality is derived from what is found to be hateful and loving, therefore for Darwin to identify love and hate as matters of fact, intstead of leaving them a matter of subjective opinion, is already committing the naturalistic fallacy. -- Syamsu ( talk) 19:20, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
@ Syamsu, what proposals do you have for improving the article? All you seem to have shown is that you judge people on their religious beliefs or views. . . dave souza, talk 07:12, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
I added that Obama used this term to criticize Republicans and it was deleted as "not relevant". On what planet is the use of mostly forgotten 100-year-old term by a head of state not relevant? Obama's use of the term has generated a ton of press and brought this idea into the public eye in a way it hasn't been for a long time. To say that's not relevant is inherently ludicrous. D O N D E groovily Talk to me 19:29, 6 April 2012 (UTC)
I would say it does have relevance simply due to how rarely the term is used in modern day politics. The large number of news articles both explaining and arguing about what it means is testament to that. And I would say that a complete history of the term is incomplete without mentioning its recent resurgence, after a long absence from politics. D O N D E groovily Talk to me 19:39, 6 April 2012 (UTC)
The introduction mentions 'Hawkins'. It seems that a more complete name or description should be used. It acts as if this has already happened.
Nantucketnoon ( talk) 05:04, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
Others<ref>Hawkins 2000</ref><ref>Dickens 2003</ref> have argued that Social Darwinism should be understood more broadly as a system of thought that perhaps predates Darwin himself and which includes all attempts to explain social change as an evolutionary process, especially those that see biological change as underlying and motivating social change. Hawkins furthermore argues that Darwin himself was a proponent of some aspects of Social Darwinism under this definition, while many other scholars tend to downplay Darwin's statements about the possible political consequences of his theory.
Coatracking citations together isn't an indication of a view being weighty or demonstrative in a field. In this case the individual creationist critiques are primary sources, and it is important to find the secondary source that notes that they are significant. Fifelfoo ( talk) 04:30, 22 June 2012 (UTC)
In the second paragraph, the last phrase, that leads to the 3rd reference in this time, says "because of the negative connotations of the theory of social Darwinism" and ends with "and the term is generally seen as pejorative". In the same sentence, the same idea is presented, so I think we could suppress one of these terms. I would rather take out the last one, "and the term is generally seen as pejorative", because it is only repeating what was already exposed. The text shall gain a little more coherence with this alteration. -- Igor Dalmy ( talk) 14:21, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
The section on Carnegie is highly misleading. Yes, he was a philanthropist, but he was against almsgiving and raising wages for workers because of his social Darwinist ideas. Read the Gospel of Wealth. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.109.220.2 ( talk) 21:06, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
There are several studies (real scholarship, not creationists) that argue that Darwin did hold a view that was a kind of social darwinism, and that this was particularly prominent in later editions of Descent of Man, when Darwin had become more influenced by Herbert Spencer's ideas. Any discussion of this in the article should of course be done seriously and with delicacy and a good sense of balance. User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 15:06, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
Although I don't know what social Darwinism is, this article currently couldn't be less clear on what it is. It opens:
And immediately continues:
The second paragraph seems to repeat the first but putting its validity into doubt. The only other defining part I see is:
Let's take that as granted, but then how is it understood ungenerally?
After the lead, I found:
So what are these many definitions? If social Darwinism has many definitions, why don't we start by warning about that, rather than going into the controversies on its history and then the strong and weak aspects of a hardly defined topic? -- Chealer ( talk) 04:12, 2 July 2013 (UTC)
Unsurprisingly, Weikart gives a
favourable review to
Social Darwinism in European and American Thought 1860-1945 by Mike Hawkins. Bearing in mind that there are competing definitions, Weikart summarises it thus;
"He defines Social Darwinism as a world view containing the following five beliefs: 1) biological laws govern all of nature, including humans, 2) Malthusian population pressure produces a struggle for existence, 3) physical and mental traits providing an advantage to individuals or species would spread, 4) selection and inheritance would produce new species and eliminate others, and 5) natural laws (including the four above) extend to human social existence, including morality and religion. Those embracing these fundamental points are Social Darwinists, whether they are militarists or pacifists, laissez-faire proponents or socialists."
There are obvious inaccuracies in this as science, not least the misinterpretation of
scientific laws and the idea that selection and inheritance are producing new species of humans, directly contrary to Darwin's work. Is it worth summarising it as one view? . .
dave souza,
talk
07:31, 3 July 2013 (UTC)
Shouldn't communism and Marxist socialism ideology also included? Although in theory communism is opposes social darwinism as makes the assumption that individuals will work towards a common good at the expense of individual benefit. In reality this shift means that "Darwinian collectivism" takes place to stratify population.
85.115.110.103 ( talk) 19:35, 11 August 2013 (UTC)
Robert C. Williams, in The Historian's Toolbox: A Student's Guide to the Theory and Craft of History, 3rd Ed. (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2012), p. 57, quotes Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman, Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They say It? (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000) as they discuss the Wansee Protocol:
Seems there should be some mention of this in section 8.3. Yopienso ( talk) 22:36, 28 September 2013 (UTC)
I want to express my disagreement with the lede of the article. First of all, from the beginning, the article is written in a defensive style. With statements like "creationists have often maintained that social Darwinism..." it first misrepresents the study of the topic with the idea that criticism of Social Darwinism is something that merely has to be associated with creationists who disagree with the Darwin's theory of evolution (creationists vs. evolutionists). It is known that agnostics like Stephen Jay Gould, Rudolf Virchow and a numer of other irreligious authors and sociologists, including evolutionists, have directly recognized the link between Darwin's theory and Social Darwinism. This is the case of Maurice Duverger,
Second, the statement "Social Darwinism owed more to Herbert Spencer's ideas, '---together with genetics and a Protestant Nonconfirmist tradition with roots in Hobbes and Malthus, than to Charles Darwin's research----" This totally mispresents the alleged definition of a social theory, on the basis of religious implications (in the end, it gives the idea of Christians vs. agnostics/atheists). Why Malthus' and Hobbes' alleged religious tradition is mentioned, and not Spencer's, Leonard Darwin's, and Pearson's?, (for instance). It is evidently biased and highly misleading anyone who wants to study seriously this topic. Whosoever wrote it, was tendenciously defending Darwin from the beginning, and pretending to blame instead "genetics" and "Protestant nonconformism". This is totally wrong! Come on! The reasoning implied is that Social Darwinists have their origin in "protestant nonconformim" which is ridiculous. When you say "protestant nonconformists", you are including, in general, reformed Christians, puritans, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists and Methodists, all of which were people who strictly speaking had absolutely nothing to do with social darwinism, since, first of all, they were not involved in scientific theories, and believed in the Bible. Any honest student of history, regardless of their religious position, can see the irrelevance and dirty tendency of mixing these things.
I understand Malthus' influence on Darwin, and therefore, on Social Darwinism, but Malthus and Hobbes were not, by any means, leaders of "Protestant nonconformism" and the last of these was even accused of atheism. It was neither "genetics" in general, since in the first half on the 20th centhruy genetics was in diapers. As history shows the fallacies of the biased arguments, I though it would be necessary to correct this, but my edition was reverted. I just ask you to please understand it, and admit that the reference is just a biased opinion, without supported arguments, coming from an anti-religious and anti-protestant site.
There is not a concensus or majoritarian viewpoint to says that "most scholars ... maintain that social Darwinism is not a necessary consequence of the principles of biological evolution." This by no means is encyclopedically neutral. It is favouring an opinion. But, first of all there is not a unified opinion, and MANY are the authors that think just the opposite, i.e. that Darwin's theory of evolution was the major source of social darwinism. I think that, therefore, there should be a balance in the style. Evoking the need for neutrality in wikipedia articles, I propose a statement which would express the truth; that usually, Darwin's supporters and advocates state that social Darwinism is not a necessary consequence of the principles of biological evolution, or Darwin's theory, though Darwin's detractors and critics often mantain the opposite.-- Goose friend ( talk) 01:59, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
Social Darwinism has nothing to do with either socialism, racism, capitalism, nazism or any other bad word that the author mentioned in the introduction. It’s just out there even if you shut your eyes and plug your ears. Chkalova67 ( talk) 14:44, 4 November 2019 (UTC)
Reference to Hobbes' views is incorrect, for he believed in Stoicism as much as Darwin or "the judicious Hooker" and clearly felt mankind should come together to survive. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.241.26.8 ( talk) 13:48, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
The summary of what I recall from the history of this subject is that it's no more a serious "application of biological concepts" to economics and politics than "savage capitalism" is an endeavor seeking to apply notions of predation zoology or anthropology of jungle-dwellers to capitalism. Actually, the influence would have been more the other way around, according to some (Desmond and Moore?), with the socioeconomic mores of the time of Darwin influencing his views of natural phenomena. With Herbert Spencer himself being credited with the phrase "survival of the fittest", not borrowing it from Darwin's biology. In the present-day zeitgeist it also seems to be a considerably extremish-left term, which often paints what seems to be a harsher picture of individuals such as Spencer himself and Malthus, in biased readings that could just as well have added Jonathan Swift to the mix as a real advocate of the cannibalism of poor children. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.68.95.91 ( talk) 01:37, 18 August 2016 (UTC)
The article has creationism prominently in the lede, but doesn't deal with it in the further text. I would prefer to have a separate section in the text or erase it completely. The role of Haeckel is not being described properly - he was crucial in propagating Darwin's biological evolution in Germany, but added a specific racist and as well neoreligeous flavor (the monism movement) to it. We doi not have to care what biologists believe evolution should mean, we need e.g. historians and sociologists explaining the impact on such interpretations on society. For theology, Friedrich Wilhelm Graf's 2011 lecture at the Bavarian academy of science: Kreationismus. Sechs Kapitel aus der Religionsgeschichte der Moderne (Creationism, six chapters from modern history of religion) provides some hints as well. Polentarion Talk 09:44, 6 September 2016 (UTC)
Why is this part of a series on discrimination? Social darwinism is as anti-discriminatory as can be, judging only based on your own ability. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Leon1122334455 ( talk • contribs) 22:06, 29 October 2016 (UTC)
For proof, look at Google's Ngram Viewer: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Social+Darwinism&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2CSocial%20Darwinism%3B%2Cc0 This is a chart of occurrences of the term in print in all of the printed works in Google's database; the graph shows the relative frequency of the term in print since the year 1800. As you can see, the term was almost unused before around 1920, dipped in the 1930's, then rose steadily from about 1940 to the 1980's. In short, no one in the 19th century used the term "social darwinism". It is primarily a 20th century term, applied to ideological and economic ideas that the left wants to denigrate. -- RJBowman ( talk) 01:57, 21 April 2017 (UTC)
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The article seems to have got itself lost in the fine arguments of who said what and when and what did they mean? That problem is difficult enough to solve but it seems to miss the point.
The problem is not what Social Darwinism means to philosophers but what it has come to mean in society. As a phrase it is important because it approximately describes the position taken by certain segments of society who promote, chiefly among themselves, the idea that the rich are society's fittest and it is their destiny to help gradually eliminate the drag on 'progress' created by the poor. They further often attach the word 'Darwinism' or the phrase 'natural selection' to this, not because they have carefully examined that link, but because they simply wish their actions to be justified as science.
Someone pointed this out above (referring to Obama's use of the term) and was roundly criticized. But it is precisely this current colloquial usage of this term that is important, not all the philosophical background.
The term "Social Darwinism" is seldom used by such the powerful either because they have never heard of this term, but do believe, through their crude understanding of Darwinism, that their beliefs are supported by science. The more sophisticated (but not necessarily more exact in their reasoning) know that it is associated with Hitler's eugenics and while they may quietly hold similar views would never admit to it because of the optics.
The point here is that these individual abuse logic and science to justify their ruthless promotion of political and social goals that unjustifiably strengthen their own position, and disempower the already disadvantaged. Note that my opposition, and likely the opposition of those who use the term 'Social Darwinism' derogatively, is not the indignation of someone simply opposed to 'social injustice'; it is the crude hijacking of 'science' to justify those ends. The same people use similar arguments to justify religious beliefs that are a similar self-serving distortion of actual religious teachings.
An article like this, that woffles on and on about what the philosophers said is absolutely necessary...in a philosophical journal, but completely misses the point in an encyclopedia article. -- 50.64.40.229 ( talk) 02:20, 9 December 2017 (UTC)
the sources cited in the article are dubious, at best. these are creationists and other types of religionists being cited, here.
but, any attempts to link darwinism with nazism should be aware that the premise is based on a category error - darwinism is about natural selection, and nazism is about artificial selection. no darwinian of any type would propose any sort of artificial selection to "better the species"; the whole point of evolutionary theory is that this happens naturally.
because nazism was about trying to direct the outcome of evolution, it was inherently anti-darwinian. it was not "collectivist" or "reformist" - it just simply wasn't darwinian at all.
this is an edit, but i'll expand on the point a little.
this is what darwinism says: if the germans are superior to the jews and the slavs, they will be more successful in their ability to reproduce and therefore leave more offspring. the germans will inherit the east merely via outreproducing their competitors - they will be naturally selected for their good traits.
but, this is what nazism says: while the germans are obviously superior to the jews and slavs, their obvious superiority is not leading to their genetic dominance. rather, these other races are breeding at higher rates, and need to be stopped from doing so by government action, in order to allow the superior germans to breed their good traits more effectively.
in a darwinian sense, nazism not only rejects natural selection in favour of artificial selection but attempts to attack those groups that it perceives as being naturally selected - jews and slavs - in favour of the weaker group, the germans. the propaganda may have used nationalistic and supremacist language, but the actual policy was about protecting the weak, in order to get the birth rate up - like a zoologist trying to save a rare strain of endangered rhino.
there's lots of influences on nazism that you can trace to lots of places, but darwin is not one of them; they were almost perfectly anti-darwinian, in behaviour.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 107.190.59.46 ( talk • contribs) 13:23, November 23, 2019 (UTC)
Why is this in that category? Did it turn into science? Does someone expect it to do that soon? -- Hob Gadling ( talk) 20:09, 9 April 2020 (UTC)
I'm planning to do some work on this article. The lede is loaded with WP:UNDUE truthy claims about morality. In no particular order, these are what I think the biggest problems to address right now are:
BrigadierG ( talk) 04:27, 26 January 2022 (UTC)
unsourced claimsabout
truthiness. Generalrelative ( talk) 07:53, 12 March 2022 (UTC)
The distinction between world view and ideology is important to my argument in two ways. First, as I shall argue below, it enables the discursive nature and functions of Social Darwinism to be grasped. Second, it provides the basis for an understanding of the intellectual context in which Social Darwinism appeared.The distinction is thus methodological rather than ontological, which is quite different from your claim that social Darwinism "is separately a worldview and a moral theory". Indeed, on p. 21, the author makes clear that his methodological distinction between world view and ideology does not map precisely onto the traditional distinction between the empirical and the normative:
The ideological aspect of a theory thus contains both descriptive and evaluative features which often makes difficult the separation of the empirical and the normative claims that are being made.So if your broader argument is that social Darwinism cannot be pseudoscientific because it is a moral theory and moral theories do not make empirical claims, this is not the source you're looking for. And even if this book did say precisely what you’d like it to say, it would still be a WP:PRIMARY intervention in the scholarly literature, rather than a WP:SECONDARY or WP:TERTIARY review of what mainstream scholars think. Only the latter two can serve to establish the overall tone and balance of our treatment of the topic. And since numerous such sources do describe social Darwinism as "discredited" [6] [7] or "pseudoscientific" [8] [9] (just a sample of what’s out there, in addition to the four sources currently cited where we use the term in the article), there would be a high burden of proof you’d need to meet in order to show that these sources do not in fact represent the scholarly mainstream. Generalrelative ( talk) 00:46, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
How should we address the difference between the moral theory of social darwinism (that the weak deserve to be weakened further) and its extremely dubious scientific claims (racial intelligence, social collapse, etc)? Requesting comment on this to help drive consensus.
BrigadierG (
talk)
01:07, 12 March 2022 (UTC)
As it is, it mixes people criticising "social darwinism" itself and people criticising "social darwinism" as a useful concept together. Eldomtom2 ( talk) 22:04, 6 May 2023 (UTC)
If you asked Enver Pasha that "are you a social darwinist?", he would first hesitate and then answer "no I am muslim of Hanafi-Maturidi school, Alhamdulillah".
Please don't do that. You seem ridiculous. 188.119.60.2 ( talk) 00:48, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
IP 79.31.103.194 is invited to discuss their preferred wording here rather than edit warring. Generalrelative ( talk) 23:24, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
The article generally presents social darwinism as a concept that is uncontroversially accepted as having existed by historians. This is not the case. The "Criticism of Social Darwinism as a category" section should be greatly expanded. Eldomtom2 ( talk) 19:45, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
Biological scientists, however, confirm the importance of genetic component explanations to aspects of social class
Can anybody check what those papers actually say? I cannot access them, and the sentence seems suspicious. Why call biologists "biological scientists", for instance? Who are they? -- Hob Gadling ( talk) 13:58, 14 May 2024 (UTC)
My claim is that the sources are one sided and do not contain any perspective on Young Turks' side. Have you read Kevorkian article? It is not supported with historical evidences and his claims do not match with the true numbers or incidents. Just because he is an author writing about this subject does not mean he is an expert and his arguments are based on truth. His claims must be examined but, as I have said, there is no read across chance since Turkish view is neglected. Furthermore, the section does not use a tentative language even though it claims that it explains a whole period and a whole generation. I believe that such a subject would require more than 6 sources and 1 paragraph B0RI$00 ( talk) 22:16, 24 June 2024 (UTC)
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Computing and commuting and missed the edit summary: sorry. RV "socialism" as having the wrong-in fact nearly the opposite-meaning.-- Old Moonraker ( talk) 15:04, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
This article needs better clarification to differentiate between the individualist form of social Darwinism and the collectivist form of social Darwinism. Darwinian Collectivism or Reform Darwinism, rather than Social Darwinism or Darwinian Individualism, are more accurate terms for Hitler's Eugenics which is the planned state control of human breeding—a program that no proponent of laissez-faire could consistently endorse. I may tackle this later if nobody gets to it. Origins of the Myth of Social Darwinism: The Ambiguous Legacy of Richard Hofstadter’s Social Darwinism in American Thought (2009), p, 37-51 and Mistaking Eugenics for Social Darwinism: Why Eugenics is Missing from the History of American Economics (2005)-- Trueliberal ( talk) 17:28, 25 February 2011 (UTC)
The Idiot's Guide to world history was written by a high school teacher without a PhD (says Amazon.com) and does not meet minimal standards in WP:RS (rule is "we only publish the opinions of reliable authors") -- please use some of the powerful books that are listed in the article. Rjensen ( talk) 18:53, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
The opening paragraph seems quite confusing, especially the first sentence. It seems to me that it should begin with a simple definition. Something like: Social Darwinism is a belief, popular in the late Victorian era in England, America, and elsewhere, which states that the strongest or fittest should survive and flourish in society, while the weak and unfit should be allowed to die.
As it is currently worded it almost sounds like the opposite is true. "Coined by those opposed to survival of the fittest" - ?? I get what you're going for, but that shouldn't be in the opening paragraph. Jasonnewyork ( talk) 15:54, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
Bold text==Nazi atrocities== I have specified what "atrocities" are referred to in the lead since they were not so described before. Peterlewis ( talk) 16:25, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
I can tell you that social darwinism is the oposite of nazism in the nazi system the state decides who lives or dies in social darwinism success or failure happens naturally acording to each individual and their work ethic or lack of one Irishfrisian ( talk) 23:44, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
Just reading the last sentence in the introduction, I think that's poorly written. My understanding is:
- one *can* start with darwins theory and apply it to society to arrive at social darwinism, in a strictly technical, amoral context, but
- one *does not necessarily* have to arrive at social darwinism from this starting point (per the first reference), and quite distinctly:
- if one introduces the entire dimension of morality, then one cannot use darwinism as a moral justification for the consequences of social darwinism (hence the invocation of the naturalistic fallacy).
The problem is, a cursory reading of that might easily go like:
- scholars have said that social darwinism doesn't follow from darwin's theory, and - using darwin's theory to arrive at social darwinism is a naturalistic fallacy, and - (following the link to naturalistic fallacy) this is probably a 'formal fallacy', ergo, the link between social darwinism and darwin's theory has been formally shown to be false.
Now, that's a completely incorrect statement, but it's a bit too easy to misapprehend (I know, because that's exactly how I just read it, until I did a double take and read around it a bit). I think this needs to be much more clearly worded, either to make it clear that the reference to 'naturalistic fallacy' is only applicable if you introduce a 'moral' dimension to the equation, which is quite aside from a logical progression or commonality between the two concepts, or else and maybe better just to remove the reference to avoid muddying the waters for the casual reader.
thoughts? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.176.223.225 ( talk) 21:55, 30 November 2011 (UTC)
The second paragraph is vague and misleading viz. -
In sociology it has been defined as a theory of social evolution which asserts that "There are underlying, and largely irresistible, forces acting in societies which are like the natural forces that operate in animal and plant communities. One can therefore formulate social laws similar to natural ones. These social forces are of such a kind as to produce evolutionary progress through the natural conflicts between social groups. The best-adapted and most successful social groups survive these conflicts, raising the evolutionary level of society generally (the 'survival of the fittest')."[5]
What is the "the evolutionary level of society" and can it be "raised"?
-- Craigmac41 ( talk) 21:06, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
Under the heading "Germany" this sentence appears: Social evolution theories in Germany gained large popularity in the 1860s and had a strong antiestablishment connotation first. I was going to clean this up to remove the trailing "first". But then realised I didn't know what exactly the author meant. Was it: "In the first place..." (i.e. "initially")? Or was it: "Firstly..." (i.e. "mainly")? 194.75.11.41 ( talk) 16:17, 23 April 2017 (UTC)
The following sentence of Darwin in the article requires explanation, for the article to explain social darwinism, rather than promote it.
"Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature"
Here Darwin commits the essential social darwinist error to make matters of good and bad, into matters of fact. A measurable good (noble) nature, and a measurable bad nature.
Darwin does not subjectively acknowlege any spiritual domain, therefore he is forced to make all issues of the worth of people into issues of measurable facts. Darwin wrote a book about emotions in which he objectifies all emotions, discounting the idea that love and hate are only subjectively identified, and not measurable. Morality is derived from what is found to be hateful and loving, therefore for Darwin to identify love and hate as matters of fact, intstead of leaving them a matter of subjective opinion, is already committing the naturalistic fallacy. -- Syamsu ( talk) 19:20, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
@ Syamsu, what proposals do you have for improving the article? All you seem to have shown is that you judge people on their religious beliefs or views. . . dave souza, talk 07:12, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
I added that Obama used this term to criticize Republicans and it was deleted as "not relevant". On what planet is the use of mostly forgotten 100-year-old term by a head of state not relevant? Obama's use of the term has generated a ton of press and brought this idea into the public eye in a way it hasn't been for a long time. To say that's not relevant is inherently ludicrous. D O N D E groovily Talk to me 19:29, 6 April 2012 (UTC)
I would say it does have relevance simply due to how rarely the term is used in modern day politics. The large number of news articles both explaining and arguing about what it means is testament to that. And I would say that a complete history of the term is incomplete without mentioning its recent resurgence, after a long absence from politics. D O N D E groovily Talk to me 19:39, 6 April 2012 (UTC)
The introduction mentions 'Hawkins'. It seems that a more complete name or description should be used. It acts as if this has already happened.
Nantucketnoon ( talk) 05:04, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
Others<ref>Hawkins 2000</ref><ref>Dickens 2003</ref> have argued that Social Darwinism should be understood more broadly as a system of thought that perhaps predates Darwin himself and which includes all attempts to explain social change as an evolutionary process, especially those that see biological change as underlying and motivating social change. Hawkins furthermore argues that Darwin himself was a proponent of some aspects of Social Darwinism under this definition, while many other scholars tend to downplay Darwin's statements about the possible political consequences of his theory.
Coatracking citations together isn't an indication of a view being weighty or demonstrative in a field. In this case the individual creationist critiques are primary sources, and it is important to find the secondary source that notes that they are significant. Fifelfoo ( talk) 04:30, 22 June 2012 (UTC)
In the second paragraph, the last phrase, that leads to the 3rd reference in this time, says "because of the negative connotations of the theory of social Darwinism" and ends with "and the term is generally seen as pejorative". In the same sentence, the same idea is presented, so I think we could suppress one of these terms. I would rather take out the last one, "and the term is generally seen as pejorative", because it is only repeating what was already exposed. The text shall gain a little more coherence with this alteration. -- Igor Dalmy ( talk) 14:21, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
The section on Carnegie is highly misleading. Yes, he was a philanthropist, but he was against almsgiving and raising wages for workers because of his social Darwinist ideas. Read the Gospel of Wealth. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.109.220.2 ( talk) 21:06, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
There are several studies (real scholarship, not creationists) that argue that Darwin did hold a view that was a kind of social darwinism, and that this was particularly prominent in later editions of Descent of Man, when Darwin had become more influenced by Herbert Spencer's ideas. Any discussion of this in the article should of course be done seriously and with delicacy and a good sense of balance. User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 15:06, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
Although I don't know what social Darwinism is, this article currently couldn't be less clear on what it is. It opens:
And immediately continues:
The second paragraph seems to repeat the first but putting its validity into doubt. The only other defining part I see is:
Let's take that as granted, but then how is it understood ungenerally?
After the lead, I found:
So what are these many definitions? If social Darwinism has many definitions, why don't we start by warning about that, rather than going into the controversies on its history and then the strong and weak aspects of a hardly defined topic? -- Chealer ( talk) 04:12, 2 July 2013 (UTC)
Unsurprisingly, Weikart gives a
favourable review to
Social Darwinism in European and American Thought 1860-1945 by Mike Hawkins. Bearing in mind that there are competing definitions, Weikart summarises it thus;
"He defines Social Darwinism as a world view containing the following five beliefs: 1) biological laws govern all of nature, including humans, 2) Malthusian population pressure produces a struggle for existence, 3) physical and mental traits providing an advantage to individuals or species would spread, 4) selection and inheritance would produce new species and eliminate others, and 5) natural laws (including the four above) extend to human social existence, including morality and religion. Those embracing these fundamental points are Social Darwinists, whether they are militarists or pacifists, laissez-faire proponents or socialists."
There are obvious inaccuracies in this as science, not least the misinterpretation of
scientific laws and the idea that selection and inheritance are producing new species of humans, directly contrary to Darwin's work. Is it worth summarising it as one view? . .
dave souza,
talk
07:31, 3 July 2013 (UTC)
Shouldn't communism and Marxist socialism ideology also included? Although in theory communism is opposes social darwinism as makes the assumption that individuals will work towards a common good at the expense of individual benefit. In reality this shift means that "Darwinian collectivism" takes place to stratify population.
85.115.110.103 ( talk) 19:35, 11 August 2013 (UTC)
Robert C. Williams, in The Historian's Toolbox: A Student's Guide to the Theory and Craft of History, 3rd Ed. (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2012), p. 57, quotes Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman, Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They say It? (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000) as they discuss the Wansee Protocol:
Seems there should be some mention of this in section 8.3. Yopienso ( talk) 22:36, 28 September 2013 (UTC)
I want to express my disagreement with the lede of the article. First of all, from the beginning, the article is written in a defensive style. With statements like "creationists have often maintained that social Darwinism..." it first misrepresents the study of the topic with the idea that criticism of Social Darwinism is something that merely has to be associated with creationists who disagree with the Darwin's theory of evolution (creationists vs. evolutionists). It is known that agnostics like Stephen Jay Gould, Rudolf Virchow and a numer of other irreligious authors and sociologists, including evolutionists, have directly recognized the link between Darwin's theory and Social Darwinism. This is the case of Maurice Duverger,
Second, the statement "Social Darwinism owed more to Herbert Spencer's ideas, '---together with genetics and a Protestant Nonconfirmist tradition with roots in Hobbes and Malthus, than to Charles Darwin's research----" This totally mispresents the alleged definition of a social theory, on the basis of religious implications (in the end, it gives the idea of Christians vs. agnostics/atheists). Why Malthus' and Hobbes' alleged religious tradition is mentioned, and not Spencer's, Leonard Darwin's, and Pearson's?, (for instance). It is evidently biased and highly misleading anyone who wants to study seriously this topic. Whosoever wrote it, was tendenciously defending Darwin from the beginning, and pretending to blame instead "genetics" and "Protestant nonconformism". This is totally wrong! Come on! The reasoning implied is that Social Darwinists have their origin in "protestant nonconformim" which is ridiculous. When you say "protestant nonconformists", you are including, in general, reformed Christians, puritans, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists and Methodists, all of which were people who strictly speaking had absolutely nothing to do with social darwinism, since, first of all, they were not involved in scientific theories, and believed in the Bible. Any honest student of history, regardless of their religious position, can see the irrelevance and dirty tendency of mixing these things.
I understand Malthus' influence on Darwin, and therefore, on Social Darwinism, but Malthus and Hobbes were not, by any means, leaders of "Protestant nonconformism" and the last of these was even accused of atheism. It was neither "genetics" in general, since in the first half on the 20th centhruy genetics was in diapers. As history shows the fallacies of the biased arguments, I though it would be necessary to correct this, but my edition was reverted. I just ask you to please understand it, and admit that the reference is just a biased opinion, without supported arguments, coming from an anti-religious and anti-protestant site.
There is not a concensus or majoritarian viewpoint to says that "most scholars ... maintain that social Darwinism is not a necessary consequence of the principles of biological evolution." This by no means is encyclopedically neutral. It is favouring an opinion. But, first of all there is not a unified opinion, and MANY are the authors that think just the opposite, i.e. that Darwin's theory of evolution was the major source of social darwinism. I think that, therefore, there should be a balance in the style. Evoking the need for neutrality in wikipedia articles, I propose a statement which would express the truth; that usually, Darwin's supporters and advocates state that social Darwinism is not a necessary consequence of the principles of biological evolution, or Darwin's theory, though Darwin's detractors and critics often mantain the opposite.-- Goose friend ( talk) 01:59, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
Social Darwinism has nothing to do with either socialism, racism, capitalism, nazism or any other bad word that the author mentioned in the introduction. It’s just out there even if you shut your eyes and plug your ears. Chkalova67 ( talk) 14:44, 4 November 2019 (UTC)
Reference to Hobbes' views is incorrect, for he believed in Stoicism as much as Darwin or "the judicious Hooker" and clearly felt mankind should come together to survive. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.241.26.8 ( talk) 13:48, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
The summary of what I recall from the history of this subject is that it's no more a serious "application of biological concepts" to economics and politics than "savage capitalism" is an endeavor seeking to apply notions of predation zoology or anthropology of jungle-dwellers to capitalism. Actually, the influence would have been more the other way around, according to some (Desmond and Moore?), with the socioeconomic mores of the time of Darwin influencing his views of natural phenomena. With Herbert Spencer himself being credited with the phrase "survival of the fittest", not borrowing it from Darwin's biology. In the present-day zeitgeist it also seems to be a considerably extremish-left term, which often paints what seems to be a harsher picture of individuals such as Spencer himself and Malthus, in biased readings that could just as well have added Jonathan Swift to the mix as a real advocate of the cannibalism of poor children. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.68.95.91 ( talk) 01:37, 18 August 2016 (UTC)
The article has creationism prominently in the lede, but doesn't deal with it in the further text. I would prefer to have a separate section in the text or erase it completely. The role of Haeckel is not being described properly - he was crucial in propagating Darwin's biological evolution in Germany, but added a specific racist and as well neoreligeous flavor (the monism movement) to it. We doi not have to care what biologists believe evolution should mean, we need e.g. historians and sociologists explaining the impact on such interpretations on society. For theology, Friedrich Wilhelm Graf's 2011 lecture at the Bavarian academy of science: Kreationismus. Sechs Kapitel aus der Religionsgeschichte der Moderne (Creationism, six chapters from modern history of religion) provides some hints as well. Polentarion Talk 09:44, 6 September 2016 (UTC)
Why is this part of a series on discrimination? Social darwinism is as anti-discriminatory as can be, judging only based on your own ability. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Leon1122334455 ( talk • contribs) 22:06, 29 October 2016 (UTC)
For proof, look at Google's Ngram Viewer: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Social+Darwinism&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2CSocial%20Darwinism%3B%2Cc0 This is a chart of occurrences of the term in print in all of the printed works in Google's database; the graph shows the relative frequency of the term in print since the year 1800. As you can see, the term was almost unused before around 1920, dipped in the 1930's, then rose steadily from about 1940 to the 1980's. In short, no one in the 19th century used the term "social darwinism". It is primarily a 20th century term, applied to ideological and economic ideas that the left wants to denigrate. -- RJBowman ( talk) 01:57, 21 April 2017 (UTC)
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The article seems to have got itself lost in the fine arguments of who said what and when and what did they mean? That problem is difficult enough to solve but it seems to miss the point.
The problem is not what Social Darwinism means to philosophers but what it has come to mean in society. As a phrase it is important because it approximately describes the position taken by certain segments of society who promote, chiefly among themselves, the idea that the rich are society's fittest and it is their destiny to help gradually eliminate the drag on 'progress' created by the poor. They further often attach the word 'Darwinism' or the phrase 'natural selection' to this, not because they have carefully examined that link, but because they simply wish their actions to be justified as science.
Someone pointed this out above (referring to Obama's use of the term) and was roundly criticized. But it is precisely this current colloquial usage of this term that is important, not all the philosophical background.
The term "Social Darwinism" is seldom used by such the powerful either because they have never heard of this term, but do believe, through their crude understanding of Darwinism, that their beliefs are supported by science. The more sophisticated (but not necessarily more exact in their reasoning) know that it is associated with Hitler's eugenics and while they may quietly hold similar views would never admit to it because of the optics.
The point here is that these individual abuse logic and science to justify their ruthless promotion of political and social goals that unjustifiably strengthen their own position, and disempower the already disadvantaged. Note that my opposition, and likely the opposition of those who use the term 'Social Darwinism' derogatively, is not the indignation of someone simply opposed to 'social injustice'; it is the crude hijacking of 'science' to justify those ends. The same people use similar arguments to justify religious beliefs that are a similar self-serving distortion of actual religious teachings.
An article like this, that woffles on and on about what the philosophers said is absolutely necessary...in a philosophical journal, but completely misses the point in an encyclopedia article. -- 50.64.40.229 ( talk) 02:20, 9 December 2017 (UTC)
the sources cited in the article are dubious, at best. these are creationists and other types of religionists being cited, here.
but, any attempts to link darwinism with nazism should be aware that the premise is based on a category error - darwinism is about natural selection, and nazism is about artificial selection. no darwinian of any type would propose any sort of artificial selection to "better the species"; the whole point of evolutionary theory is that this happens naturally.
because nazism was about trying to direct the outcome of evolution, it was inherently anti-darwinian. it was not "collectivist" or "reformist" - it just simply wasn't darwinian at all.
this is an edit, but i'll expand on the point a little.
this is what darwinism says: if the germans are superior to the jews and the slavs, they will be more successful in their ability to reproduce and therefore leave more offspring. the germans will inherit the east merely via outreproducing their competitors - they will be naturally selected for their good traits.
but, this is what nazism says: while the germans are obviously superior to the jews and slavs, their obvious superiority is not leading to their genetic dominance. rather, these other races are breeding at higher rates, and need to be stopped from doing so by government action, in order to allow the superior germans to breed their good traits more effectively.
in a darwinian sense, nazism not only rejects natural selection in favour of artificial selection but attempts to attack those groups that it perceives as being naturally selected - jews and slavs - in favour of the weaker group, the germans. the propaganda may have used nationalistic and supremacist language, but the actual policy was about protecting the weak, in order to get the birth rate up - like a zoologist trying to save a rare strain of endangered rhino.
there's lots of influences on nazism that you can trace to lots of places, but darwin is not one of them; they were almost perfectly anti-darwinian, in behaviour.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 107.190.59.46 ( talk • contribs) 13:23, November 23, 2019 (UTC)
Why is this in that category? Did it turn into science? Does someone expect it to do that soon? -- Hob Gadling ( talk) 20:09, 9 April 2020 (UTC)
I'm planning to do some work on this article. The lede is loaded with WP:UNDUE truthy claims about morality. In no particular order, these are what I think the biggest problems to address right now are:
BrigadierG ( talk) 04:27, 26 January 2022 (UTC)
unsourced claimsabout
truthiness. Generalrelative ( talk) 07:53, 12 March 2022 (UTC)
The distinction between world view and ideology is important to my argument in two ways. First, as I shall argue below, it enables the discursive nature and functions of Social Darwinism to be grasped. Second, it provides the basis for an understanding of the intellectual context in which Social Darwinism appeared.The distinction is thus methodological rather than ontological, which is quite different from your claim that social Darwinism "is separately a worldview and a moral theory". Indeed, on p. 21, the author makes clear that his methodological distinction between world view and ideology does not map precisely onto the traditional distinction between the empirical and the normative:
The ideological aspect of a theory thus contains both descriptive and evaluative features which often makes difficult the separation of the empirical and the normative claims that are being made.So if your broader argument is that social Darwinism cannot be pseudoscientific because it is a moral theory and moral theories do not make empirical claims, this is not the source you're looking for. And even if this book did say precisely what you’d like it to say, it would still be a WP:PRIMARY intervention in the scholarly literature, rather than a WP:SECONDARY or WP:TERTIARY review of what mainstream scholars think. Only the latter two can serve to establish the overall tone and balance of our treatment of the topic. And since numerous such sources do describe social Darwinism as "discredited" [6] [7] or "pseudoscientific" [8] [9] (just a sample of what’s out there, in addition to the four sources currently cited where we use the term in the article), there would be a high burden of proof you’d need to meet in order to show that these sources do not in fact represent the scholarly mainstream. Generalrelative ( talk) 00:46, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
How should we address the difference between the moral theory of social darwinism (that the weak deserve to be weakened further) and its extremely dubious scientific claims (racial intelligence, social collapse, etc)? Requesting comment on this to help drive consensus.
BrigadierG (
talk)
01:07, 12 March 2022 (UTC)
As it is, it mixes people criticising "social darwinism" itself and people criticising "social darwinism" as a useful concept together. Eldomtom2 ( talk) 22:04, 6 May 2023 (UTC)
If you asked Enver Pasha that "are you a social darwinist?", he would first hesitate and then answer "no I am muslim of Hanafi-Maturidi school, Alhamdulillah".
Please don't do that. You seem ridiculous. 188.119.60.2 ( talk) 00:48, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
IP 79.31.103.194 is invited to discuss their preferred wording here rather than edit warring. Generalrelative ( talk) 23:24, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
The article generally presents social darwinism as a concept that is uncontroversially accepted as having existed by historians. This is not the case. The "Criticism of Social Darwinism as a category" section should be greatly expanded. Eldomtom2 ( talk) 19:45, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
Biological scientists, however, confirm the importance of genetic component explanations to aspects of social class
Can anybody check what those papers actually say? I cannot access them, and the sentence seems suspicious. Why call biologists "biological scientists", for instance? Who are they? -- Hob Gadling ( talk) 13:58, 14 May 2024 (UTC)
My claim is that the sources are one sided and do not contain any perspective on Young Turks' side. Have you read Kevorkian article? It is not supported with historical evidences and his claims do not match with the true numbers or incidents. Just because he is an author writing about this subject does not mean he is an expert and his arguments are based on truth. His claims must be examined but, as I have said, there is no read across chance since Turkish view is neglected. Furthermore, the section does not use a tentative language even though it claims that it explains a whole period and a whole generation. I believe that such a subject would require more than 6 sources and 1 paragraph B0RI$00 ( talk) 22:16, 24 June 2024 (UTC)