Darwinian Ideas How Much Influence

Darwinian Ideas

How much influence did the work of Charles Darwin have on Herbert Spencer, William Graham Sumner, and Lester Frank Ward? And who has made the better case in terms of plugging Darwin's evolutionary concepts and theories into late 19th Century American Society? This paper examines the ideas presented by Spencer, Sumner, and Ward, and offers the opinion that Spencer had the greater influence on the future of American thought and social values. There are many so-called "experts" on cultures and religion that invoke the word "evolution" (in putting down evolution as a scientific theory in order to promote a "creationist" agenda), it is worthwhile to look to the past for thinkers' views on Darwin and evolution.

Meanwhile, the same year that Herbert Spencer - a nineteenth century social scientist - published his much-heralded essay on school curriculum ("What Knowledge is of Most Worth"), Charles Darwin published his earth-shaking, scientifically revolutionary title, Origins of the Species. And it is clear that "evolutionary thinking was entering into scientific discourse" (Silberman, 2003), and as a result, the concept of evolution (on many levels) was "transforming our understanding of man's place in the natural order..." Silberman writes in the Journal of Education.

As for Spencer's use of Darwinian thought, the social scientist's work reflected a "relentless effort to formulate an overarching theory of evolution and to bring it to bear on all matters human."

Evolution (social and biological evolution), in the view of Spencer, "is fundamentally a process of integration and differentiation..." Even the gestation of a living creature, Spencer believed, "is an evolutionary process whereby an initial undifferentiated mass is transformed into a complex organism, each part distinct from, but related to, the other parts," Silverman wrote. Spencer was apparently seen as a genius in terms of understanding - and putting into words and concepts - that just as "human history provides evidence for the specific laws of social evolution and must, in turn, be understood in light of such laws.

William Graham Sumner - who was, according to the Journal of Libertarian Studies, a "pioneering sociologist" and "astute historian of the early American republic" - critiqued democracy in 20th Century as "plutocratic, paternalistic, and imperialist" (Trask, 2004). He saw the western nation-states as "too geographically extensive, populous, and diverse" to ever achieve democracy; he saw the "great mass" of Europeans and Americans as "incapable of self-government"; and further, he believed the "plutocrats in America" would become imperialistic and "warlike, and would gradually extend paternal protections to the masses.

Around the year 1876, Sumner began reading Charles Darwin, Thomas Huxley, and Herbert Spencer, and Trask asserts that in particular, Spencer's books, Social Statics, First Principles, and Study of Sociology "exerted enormous influence on his thought." It was from this point on that Sumner became more and more interested in social theory, and in the mid-1890s, began devoting "his full attention to sociology."

How influenced was he by Darwin's work? Scholars and critics have "mistakenly cited Sumner as the leading Social Darwinist of late nineteenth century America," Trask explains. Such an ascription "both distorts the substance of his thought and grossly exaggerates his actual influence on the politics of his country."

He exerted "little influence" on American politics, Trask continues, though Sumner "praised modern capitalism," believed that the doctrine of "laissez faire is just as applicable to society as it is to the economy," for, "the social order," Trask explains, "like the economy, is government by its own laws and logic of development."

Trask spends a good deal of his article insisting that Sumner's views are more like today's Libertarian views ("society does not need any care of supervision...society [just needs to be] freed from these meddlers..." e.g., big government, Trask paraphrases) than they are in the genre of Social Darwinism.

There may be some degree of truth to what Trask (by the very fact that he is writing in the Journal of Libertarian Studies he becomes in effect a PR spokesman, and clearly an advocate, for Libertarian politics) says about Sumner, but in the Columbia Encyclopedia - which paraphrases five respected books critiquing Sumner's life and scholarship), Sumner did follow Darwinian motifs and themes.

As a sociologist he did valuable work in charting the evolution of human customs - folkways and mores," the Columbia reference article explains. "He concluded that the power of these forces, developed in the course of human evolution, rendered useless any attempts at social reform."

He also authored the term "ethnocentrism," which is used to "designate attitudes of superiority about one's own group in comparison with others," the article on Sumner continues. But meantime, as to the question - "What ideas did Sumner take from Darwin, and how did he apply them to social problems?" - Sumner took Darwin's evolutionary ideas and placed them into a political context, saying basically that no government can truly give a nation democracy, because the laws of nature are in control, and those laws will evolve as they wish to on their own time.