Social Darwinism was later employed by Herbert Spencer who coined the phrase "survival of the fittest". Darwin only barely touches on the role of man in his Origin of Species. What was he afraid of? Or is there a more plausible reason to that?
2006-08-29 06:22:31 · 11 answers · asked by AustinG 2 in Social Science ➔ Anthropology
The first of 15 chapters in Darwins 'Origin of Species' (1858) was about the role of man. It's not much but the main goal of the book was to describe natural selection.
In 1868 he wrote a book named 'Variation of Plants and Animals Under Domestication' that focuses on the role of humans. In 1871 he wrote a book about human evolution.
So he has written about it, it's just not well known.
Good question btw.
2006-08-29 06:57:45 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 0⤋
Darwin's only fear was that his objective nature and views would be subjectively misconstrued by political, religious and scientific powers that be.
It was easy for him to see that man was a 'newcomer' to a world that supported animal life (in one form or another) for, let us say at least a billion years. He also knew, given all the charactoristics dispalyed by man throughout history at the time was in most cases akin to a malignant blight on the earth. Unpredictable, ravenous and destructive to his own ecology and therefor unworthy of any of his time.
I am the Fringe and you are not. Blog On!
2006-08-29 15:44:10 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
at the time darwin was studying, there was still a huge division between man and nature.. this was strongly perpetuated by the church, who believed that man had a special place, above that of animals... they were revolutionary enough ideas that species were mutable, that the earth was old, etc... for darwin to go so far as to say that humans were no more special than animals would have brought ENORMOUS opposition and persecution.. even more so than he was already facing for his ideas
2006-08-29 15:16:28 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Social Darwinism has absolutely nothing to do with the theory of evolution, and I'm sure old Charlie is turning in his grave that his name is even associated with it.
2006-08-29 21:02:50 · answer #4 · answered by Whedonist 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Darwin covered human evolution in great detail in his book "The Descent of Man". He didn't cover it in "Origin of Species" because he knew that all the religious nutbars would go ballistic, so he wanted to "ease their pain".
2006-08-29 17:31:20 · answer #5 · answered by stevewbcanada 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Darwin had to allocate a lot of time to non-human species, whose evolutionary history is more interesting anyway.
2006-08-29 13:28:56 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Darwin's wife was a devout Anglican, and he bottled his work inside of him for years for fear of offending her and published it only because of relentless prodding by his brother, who thought that other researchers were getting close to rediscovering what Darwin knew for years...
2006-08-29 13:31:37 · answer #7 · answered by NC 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
It was , and is, a theory. Darwin was involved in scientific inquire. He took the theory as far as it went.
2006-08-31 04:30:24 · answer #8 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
He ran out of little boys to play with.
2006-08-29 13:25:55 · answer #9 · answered by John M 3 · 0⤊ 2⤋
to reveal the scietific truth was unheard of at that time
2006-08-29 14:20:51 · answer #10 · answered by a.j. 5 · 0⤊ 1⤋