Darwin and Social Darwinism
CHY4U
Unit 3
19th Century Scientific Advances
• Science is trendy and practical
– Electron
– Compound microscope
– Pasteurization
– Thermodynamics
– Periodic table
– [Zipper patent, paper clip]
Giraffe
• A LONG LONG time ago there were different
kinds of giraffes:
– Short necked
– Long necked
Evolution and Natural Selection
• Evolution = change over time
– Mechanism = natural selection
• Those species that are best adapted to their
environment survive, while those that are not adapted
to their environment die out.
Challenge To Traditional Thinking
Age of
earth is
millions of
years old
Scientific
thinking
Change and
progress are
possible
Age of earth
according to
the Bible
Religious
dogma
Change is not
desirable
Brave New World
• http://www.cbc.ca/player/Shows/Shows/The+
Nature+of+Things/Darwin%27s+Brave+New+
World/ID/1316757054/
• CBC, The Nature of Things, Darwin’s Brave
New World (45.04) [intro is 2:40]
Finches on Galapagos Islands
Darwin:
“I never dreamed that islands, about fifty or
sixty miles apart, and most them in sight of each
other, formed of precisely the same rocks,
placed under a quite similar climate, rising to a
nearly equal height, would have been differently
tenanted; but we shall soon see that this is the
case.”
Jonathan Clements, Darwin’s Notebook: The Life, Times, and Discoveries of Charles Robert Darwin (London: Quid
Publishing, 2009), 50.
“The most curious fact is the perfect gradation in
the size of the beaks in the different species of
Geospiza, from one as large as that of a hawfinch to
that of a chaffinch… there are no less than six
species with insensibly graduated beaks… Seeing
this gradation and diversity of structure in one
small, intimately related group of birds, one might
really fancy that from an original paucity of birds in
this archipelago, one species had been taken and
modified for different ends.”
Jonathan Clements, Darwin’s Notebook: The Life, Times, and Discoveries of Charles Robert Darwin (London:
Quid Publishing, 2009), 65.
Galapagos Online: Darwin’s Finches. N.d.,
http://www.galapagosonline.com/Galapagos_Natural_History/Birds_and_Animals/Birds
/Darwins_Finches.html (Nov. 10, 2011)
PBS. Evolution Library. Adaptive Radiation – Darwin’s Finches. 2001.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/01/6/image_pop/l_016_02.html (Nov. 10, 2011)
Tree of Life
Ian Sample, Evolution: Charles Darwin Was Wrong About the Tree of Life, The Guardian, 2009, Jan. 21,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/jan/21/charles-darwin-evolution-species-tree-life (Nov. 10, 2011).
Social Darwinism
• Misapplication of Darwinian theory of
“survival of the fittest” to human races.
• “social Darwinism, the theory that persons, groups,
and races are subject to the same laws of natural
selection as Charles Darwin had perceived in plants
and animals in nature. According to the theory, which
was popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries,
the weak were diminished and their cultures delimited,
while the strong grew in power and in cultural
influence over the weak. Social Darwinists held that
the life of humans in society was a struggle for
existence ruled by “survival of the fittest,” a phrase
proposed by the British philosopher and scientist
Herbert Spencer. “
• “an extension of Darwinism to social
phenomena; specifically: a sociological theory
that sociocultural advance is the product of
intergroup conflict and competition and the
socially elite classes (as those possessing
wealth and power) possess biological
superiority in the struggle for existence.”
Giraffe
• http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2
013/01/15/giraffe-necks-not-for-sex/