Re: Social Darwinism; was: So Long Judge Moore, We'll Miss You

Arne Vogel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
> ambrose searle wrote:
> > Arne Vogel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
> > 
> >>Arne Vogel wrote:
> >>
> >>>This is incorrect. "Social Darwinism" was brought up by Herbert Spencer, 
> >>>2 years before "Origin of Species":
> > 
> > 
> > And Abraham Lincoln was an Elvis Presley fan.
> 
> You claimed that *Darwin* came up with

Nope. I said he "promoted" it.

> what is now known as "Social 
> Darwinism", and quoted Descent of Man to prove your position.

In DESCENT OF MAN, Chapter 5, clear statements of Social Darwinism are
made.

Here is a nice compilation of them:

http://human-nature.com/rmyoung/papers/paper60h.html
---
Here, for example, is Darwin in the Descent of Man.

With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those
that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised
men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of
elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the
sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost
skill to save the life of everyone to the last moment. There is reason
to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak
constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak
members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has
attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must
be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a
want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a
domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly anyone
is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.... (Descent,
1874, pp. 133-134)

He goes on:

We must therefore bear the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak
surviving and propagating their kind; but there appears to be at least
one check in steady action; namely that the weaker and inferior
members of society do not marry so freely as the sound, and this check
might be indefinitely increased by the weak in body or mind refraining
from marriage, though this is more to be hoped for than expected.
(Descent, 1874, p. 134)

A little bit later:

But the inheritance of property by itself is very far from an evil;
for without the accumulation of capital the arts could not progress;
and it is chiefly through their power that the civilised races have
extended and are now everywhere extending their range, so as to take
the place of the lower races. (Descent, 1874, p. 135)

Further on:

The presence of a body of well-instructed men, who have not to labour
for their daily bread, is important to a degree which cannot be
overestimated. As all high intellectual work is carried on by them,
and on such work, material progress of all kinds mainly depends, not
to mention other and higher advantages. (Descent, 1874. p. 135)

American Social Darwinism could take comfort from the following:

There is apparently much truth in the belief that the wonderful
progress of the United States, as well as the character of the people,
are the results of natural selection; for the more energetic,
restless, and courageous men from all parts of Europe have emigrated
during the last ten or twelve generations to that great country, and
have there succeeded best. (Descent, 1874, p. 142)

He carries on:

Obscure as is the problem of the advance of civilisation, we can at
least see that a nation which produced during a lengthened period the
greatest number of highly intellectual, energetic, brave, patriotic,
and benevolent men, would generally prevail over less favored nations.
(Descent, 1874, p. 142)

And further on:

Nevertheless the more intelligent members within the same community
will succeed better in the long run than the inferior, and leave a
more numerous progeny, and this is a form of natural selection. The
more efficient causes of progress seem to consist of a good education
during youth whilst the brain is impressible, and of a high standard
of excellence, inculcated by the ablest and best men, embodied in the
laws, customs and traditions of the nation, and enforced by public
opinion. (Descent, 1874, p. 143)

I skip now to the general summary where Darwin reprises the
quasi-imperialist views in the above passages.

The advancement of the welfare of mankind is a most intricate problem:
all ought to refrain from marriage who cannot avoid abject poverty for
their children; for poverty is not only a great evil, but tends to its
own increase by leading to recklessness in marriage. (Descent, 1874,
p. 618)

Who says, by the way, that Darwin didn't take in what Malthus said? He
goes on:

On the other hand, as Mr. Galton has remarked, if the prudent avoid
marriage, whilst the reckless marry, the inferior members tend to
supplant the better members of society. Man, like every other animal,
has no doubt advanced to his present high condition through a struggle
for existence consequent upon his rapid multiplication; and if he is
to advance still higher, it is to be feared that he must remain
subject to a severe struggle. Otherwise he would sink into indolence,
and the more gifted men would not be more successful in the battle of
life than the less gifted. Hence our natural rate of increase, though
leading to many and obvious evils, must not be greatly diminished by
any means. There should be open competition for all men; and the most
able should not-be prevented by laws or customs from succeeding best
and rearing the largest number of offspring. Important as the struggle
for existence has been and even still is, yet as far as the highest
part of man's nature is concerned there are other agencies more
important. For the moral qualities are advanced, either directly or
indirectly, much more through the effects of habit, the reasoning
powers, instruction, religion, &c, than through natural selection;
though to this latter agency may be safely attributed the social
instincts, which afforded the basis for the development of the moral
sense. (Descent, 1874, p. 618)

I have quoted at length these passages from Huxley and Darwin to show
the inseparability of so-called Darwinism from so-called Social
Darwinism and, congruent with that, between science and ideology.
Anyone wishing to separate the scientific from the social from the
theological will have to contend with these passages in these men's
work. And anyone wishing to confine Darwin's Social Darwinism to his
post-Origin work will have to contend with Silvan Schweber's claim:
"To the best of my knowledge the M and N notebooks contain the first
presentation of an evolutionary view of society based on an
evolutionary view of nature" (1977, p. 232).

Would-be separators of Darwin the biological scientist from Darwin the
Social Darwinist would also be likely to stumble over passages from
the E Notebook; the projected Chapter 6 of Natural Selection ("Theory
Applied to the Races of Man", Stauffer, 1975); the marginal
annotations in Darwin's own books on the races of man; a letter to
Lyell in 1859 that applied natural selection and the effects of
inherited mental exercise as follows: "I look at this process as now
going on with the races of man; the less intellectual races being
exterminated" (LL 2: 211). These evidences of continuity, along with
many more, have been set forth in John Greene's convincing essay on
"Darwin as a Social Evolutionist" (1981a, pp. 95-127). This
complements his earlier on "Biology and Social Theory in the 19th
Century" (1981, pp. 60-94), and both invite us to broaden and deepen
our views on the mutual constitutiveness of scientific and social
thought.
----

The fact that you and your Darwin apologist friends keep pointing out
that there were others besides Darwin who promoted racial evolution
EVEN BEFORE Darwin did in 1871 doesn't erase the fact that DARWIN DID
IN 1871.

I've never argued that Darwin was the "inventor" of evolutionary
racism. He just promoted it.

Just because Hitler didn't invent Anti-Semitism doesn't get him off
the hook.

> Too bad only that Descent of Man is from 1871, and Herbert Spencer's
> (who *really* started the thing) book "Progress: It's Law and Cause"
> (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/spencer-darwin.html) is from 1857,
> 14 years *before* that. IOW, in the very least, you quoted the wrong
> *book* (but more likely the wrong man altogether).
> 
> So if you want to see a person that has problems with memorizing the
> direction of time flow, look in the mirror.
> 
> <quote>
> Many may not be aware that it was Spencer, and not Darwin who coined the
> term "survival of the fittest", as well as popularizing the term
> "evolution."
> </quote>
> (http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Spencer)
> 
> Oops! Not even *that* phrase was coined by Darwin!
> 
> You probably have a problem with the *name* "Social Darwinism". But I'm 
> not talking about the name, I'm talking about the *concept*. Speaking of 
> conception, I also existed some 8 months before I had a name. Weird, 
> isn't it?