Darwinism and Social Darwinism

Evolution

Before focusing on Darwinism as such, it is perhaps better to start with the more general term evolution. This refers to three different, although connected, ideas. First, there is the fact of evolution. The claim is that all organisms—plants and animals, including humans, living and dead—are the end products of a long, slow, natural (law-bound) process of development from other organisms, probably simpler and ultimately probably from inorganic materials. Recognizing that many Christians take the early Bible stories metaphorically, if one believes in the fact of evolution, then he or she is saying that the 6-day creation story of Genesis is false.

Second, there is the path of evolution. It is common to use the metaphor of a tree of life, thinking that ultimately all organisms come from a few shared ancestors, although not every evolutionist in the past was committed to this metaphor. Early 19th-century French evolutionist Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck, for instance, thought that life was continually being created naturally; hence, all organisms are on a parallel series of ladder-like paths, going up to the highest point, humankind. Thus, we humans do not necessarily share common ancestors with today's tigers, for instance.

Third, there is the mechanism or cause of evolution. Here one is talking about what drives evolution. Lamarck famously (or notoriously) thought that organisms directly inherit features that were acquired or developed by ancestors. Thus, the blacksmith develops strong arms from working in the forge, and his children are born with strong arms. Contrary to the occasional newspaper reports, Lamarckism is entirely discredited today. Other mechanisms have included a kind of inborn momentum (orthogenesis) and a sort of random jumping with new forms coming spontaneously (saltationism).

Charles Darwin and Darwinism

And then there is Charles Darwin. He published his great work, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, in 1859. He was not the first to argue for the fact of evolution. Apart from Lamarck and many others, his own grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, pushed evolutionary ideas at the end of the 18th century. But it was Charles Darwin who made the case so strongly that from then on, it was the background position against which critics had to argue. As often remarked, Darwin never actually used the word evolution in his book, although the last word was evolved. The term was only just then coming into general use, and he used it often in later publications. Before the mid-19th century, the term used more commonly was transmutation. Darwin spoke of “descent with modification.”

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