Introduction to scientific humanities, an historical perspective:Case study

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“[The book] revolutionized the study of Natural History, and carried away captive the best men of the… age”1—such were the words that the co-discoverer of the theory of natural selection, Alfred Russel Wallace, used to describe Charles Darwin's seminal work On the Origin of Species (“Origin”). Yet, Gregory Claeys, in his article The “Survival of the Fittest” and the Origins of Social Darwinism, contends that ‘Darwin's discoveries occasioned no revolution in social theory, but instead involved remapping, with the assistance of a theory of the biological inheritance of character traits, a preexisting structure of ideas based largely, though not exclusively, upon a Malthusian and economic metaphor of the “struggle for existence”.'

Thus, we have here two contrasting (but not necessarily conflicting) viewpoints on Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection: one that sees it as groundbreaking in the field of natural history; and another that considers it a kind of re-arrangement of concepts in the history of ideas that, though important, was hardly original. My opinion on this is two-fold: firstly, it must be kept in mind that Darwin's theory and concepts were not static, as they developed over a period of time—they were not, as “might be too easily perceived by modern readers[,] a monolithic idea grasped more or less at once by Darwin.”

Extraits

[...] 139-145 Freeman, Derek; and Carl Jay Bajema, John Blacking, Robert L. Carneiro, U. M.Cowgill, Santiago Genovés, Charles C. Gillispie, Michael T. Ghiselin, John C. [...]

[...] It lent to their respective causes the force of something that was worth believing in—indeed, something that people wanted to believe in. This is why, no matter whether it was socialists, anarchists, or individualists, people were keen to use Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection to rally others to their cause—because it pointed to a brighter horizon and a better future Hobhouse, p Strong, p Mc Connaughey, p Costa, p Thus, in conclusion, even though “Darwin was a relative latecomer to a debate which crossed social theory as well as biology, geology, and a number of other disciplines”17, his theory of evolution by natural selection was definitely not insignificant, its effects having been “both to extend and complicate the issues which were prominent in the previous generation”18—somewhat in the style that he postulated the evolutionary tree worked as it differentiated into manifold and multifarious life Claeys, p Rose, p Bibliography Books Darwin, Charles: On the Origin of Species Darwin, Charles: The Descent of Man Darwin, Charles: More Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume Middlesex, Echo Library Darwin, Charles; and Barlow, Nora The Autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809–1882. [...]

[...] Secondly, the transposition of Darwinism into the racial context brought to the foreground issues concerning biology. As opined in Claeys' article, Darwin's theory of evolution altered the racial discourse by bringing into the picture inheritance (rather than latter-day efforts) as well as skin color—both of which were biological and therefore unchangeable. In the words of Mc Connaughey, “Imperialism and dogmatic racism were translated into biological language: ‘Then will the world enter upon a new stage of its history-the final competition of races for which the Anglo-Saxon race is being schooled . [...]

[...] Greene, MarvinHarris, Daniel Heyduk, Kinji Imanishi, Nevin P. Lamb, Ernst Mayr, Johannes W. Raum, G. G.Simpson: The Evolutionary Theories of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer [and Comments and Replies], Current Anthropology, Vol No (Sep., 1974), pp. 211-237 Mc Connaughey, Gloria: Darwin and Social Darwinism, Osiris, Vol (1950), pp. [...]

[...] All mankind in turn subject themselves more or less to the discipline described; they either may or may not advance under it, but, in the nature of things, only those who do advance under it eventually survive.” Therein we find the genesis of the term “survival of the fittest”. Spencer's own theory of evolution, involving the complexification of things from homogeneity to heterogeneity, in turn borrowed from Smith's general concept of differentiation, which was represented economically by increasing returns and the division of labor. [...]