In his seminal work The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin illustrates his revolutionary theory of evolution about the “survival of the fittest.” Darwin argues that the species existing today evolved from a common ancestor and through a long series of natural competition, only the traits favorable for survival survived. Now this theory solidified almost as a fact to explain the history of evolution.
As I was revisiting this concept in a course, however, I learned that there is another side to Darwin’s theory. As the theory of competition and natural selection became more and more accepted, there appeared a group of social scientists creating a new concept under the name of Social Darwinism. In essence, Social Darwinist employed Darwin’s theory of evolution to provide an explanation to political, social and economic phenomena which were often unjust. I would like to introduce two of such examples and discuss the implications of this.
The most commonly cited incident of Social Darwinism is capitalism, especially laissez-faire capitalism. In such a system, any government intervention in the economy is opposed. The economy is fully left on its own, much like nature itself. Then market competition naturally occurs and those with more market power would be selected as the winners of the competition. Supporters of laissez-faire capitalism make such analogies to Darwin’s theory to argue that as the market is fully capable of operating efficiently on its own, no outside intervention is necessary.
Another example is racism. Proponents of racism also employed Darwin’s theory of the inheritance of favorable traits to explain the differences between racial groups. According to them, there has been constant competition among races and the wons that one became the dominant race while the others became the so-called “inferior” races. Racists argued that instinctive disgust, the tendency of species to instinctively avoid anything that could potentially be detrimental to their survival, is also present in humans. Hence, the discrimination against the inferior groups is a natural instinct of the dominant race. Moreover, Darwin’s theory on purposeful mating of species to inherit the favorable traits to their offspring was used to argue that the dominant race were biologically superior as well with better intelligence and stronger genes. As such, Social Darwinists used Darwin’s theory of evolution to justify these beliefs, perhaps henceforth fueling the claim that capitalists were not that different from the Nazis.
Darwin’s theory of evolution has, no doubt, shifted entirely the view on the origin of life. Although it was a revolutionary work widely praised by the scientific community, outside of it it was abused as an excuse for many inhumane practices. Thankfully, nowadays Social Darwinism is merely a pseudoscience, as its logic is not supported. One of the main reasons opposing it is Naturalistic Fallacy, which occurs when phenomena of nature are automatically assumed to be correct. Although competition and selection have happened for a long while in nature, it does not signify that the same concepts can be applied to define human moral values. Hence, Social Darwinism was merely an abuse of a scientific theory that should not have been applied outside of its original intention.
This serves as another reminder for any scientist and researcher that a theory or experiment can have severe unforeseen consequences when extrapolated outside of its purpose. This ties in with the responsibility of a researcher to consider the consequences of his/her work before proceeding with it along with the moral obligation of any of us to refrain from falling into any fallacies as such.
Sources/ more food for thought:
https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1058&context=trinitypapers
https://www.genetics.org/content/183/3/767
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2967206?seq=2#metadata_info_tab_contents