Social Darwinism

Social Darwinism therefore has a distinctly checkered history. A "science" that concludes that nonwhites, working-class people, and women are biologically unable to succeed is nowadays likely to encounter ridicule and outright hostility. Sociobiology, the forerunner of evolutionary psychology, has run into similar controversy. It suggested that genes and the reproduction of genes into future generations is the primary mechanism informing the behavior of humans and other animals. Sexuality and gender inequalities are largely governed by genes, and there is little that can be done to change inherited nature (Wilson).

But there remains much potential value in alternative forms of Social Darwinism. One important contemporary application of evolutionary thought to human society is to use evolution primarily as a metaphor or analogy. Jürgen Habermas, for example, envisages society as similar to a natural organism, one with highly differentiated parts, one that is self-maintaining and capable of selecting alternative strategies. This has echoes in the analogies between society and nature made by, for example, Herbert Spencer. But Habermas uses the organic metaphor not as a means of developing laws supposedly applying to both humans and nonhumans. Rather, evolution and biology are being used as heuristic devices. They are deployed as a means of understanding how contemporary society develops and changes.

Evolutionary analogies are used in other fields. "Evolutionary economics," for example, treats the competition of firms as analogous to the struggle for survival in the nonhuman world. And a popular understanding of technological change also uses evolutionary analogies, some technologies succeeding over others in a competitive process.

Analogies and metaphors of this kind are helpful in developing new insights. But they do not address the main difficulties of early Social Darwinism. Two central questions remain. In what sense is society "natural"? How are the insights of the social and natural sciences to be combined?

A useful first step in developing a modern "Social Darwinism" would be to recognize different levels of generality. Evolutionary processes and tendencies operate at a general level and over immense periods of time. Biological evolution has left human beings with developmental tendencies and needs stemming from their remarkably long periods of infancy. But precisely how these tendencies and needs are realized crucially depends on the contingent circumstances that they encounter. Early parenting as well as experience at school and work deeply affect cognitive abilities and levels of health, and these are all highly variable over time and between different societies.

A rigorous dualism between "society" and "nature" was maintained by early Social Darwinism, women and nonwhites being allocated to the category of "nature," for example, and European men being allocated to "culture." This kind of dichotomy is full of dangerous implications but can be overcome if evolution and biology are envisaged as bequeathing potentials and tendencies that can be realized in different ways by the kinds of society encountered.

Social Darwinism attempted, often in crude, premature, and dangerous ways, to link insights from the social and natural sciences. But there remain exciting possibilities for developing new, more complex, nuanced, and transdisciplinary ways of linking the social and biological sciences. These are likely to throw important new light on the nature and well-being of humans as they interact with one another and their environment.