1. Darwin and his Influence in the Age of Progress:
AP European Stirling/McCusker

2. Bourgeoisie
(owner class)
Conflict Classless Marx
Society
Proletariat
(worker class)
19th Century Science:
By 1870, the prestige of science had reached its highest point throughout Europe.
Marx’s view of history was seen as a ‘scientific’ approach to history, where objective methods of science could be used to ‘test’ his theories, adding credibility to them.

3. 19th Century Science:
Auguste Comte developed his ‘System of Positive Philosophy’ which organized the stages of human intellectual activity into:
THEOLOGICAL METAPHYSICAL SCIENTIFIC (God’s will) (Nature’s will) (unchanging laws)
Comte is considered the founder of Sociology.

4. 19th Century Science:
Isaac Newton was able to explain the behavior of the physical universe through natural, unchanging laws of physics.
Newton had become a symbol of the possibilities of science, and a great source of British nationalist pride.

5. 19th Century Science:
Charles Lyell effectively discredited the long-standing Judeo-Christian view that the Earth’s surface was formed by gigantic events over a short time about 6 thousand years before.
Lyell was able to show that the Earth’s surface had been formed slowly over a very long period of time (Lyell was a personal friend of Charles Darwin.)

7. Charles Darwin:
Using Lyell’s work and Thomas Malthus’ Theory of Population as starting points, Darwin was able to explain that in every species many more individuals are born than can possibly survive, and that adaptation provided some variations with a better chance for survival than others. (natural selection)
The chances for survival were improved when some random variations were better adapted to their environment than others, ensuring that those traits were inherited by future generations over a very long, slow process across time.

8. Darwin:
Darwin delayed publishing his work for years, as he knew how controversial it would be.
His wife was also a devout Christian.
He finally published his work in 1859, as he knew that Alfred Russell Wallace was developing the same work to the same conclusions independently. It was time.

9. Darwin:
Darwin’s work had a powerful influence on European thought; especially on the middle classes.
He was hailed as “the Newton of Biology”, and further emphasized the power of objective science in Western Civilization.
Darwin’s work reinforced Comte’s, reinforced Lyell’s, and their work fit nicely into his.

11. Darwin:
Eventually, Darwin’s work was being mis-applied to human affairs:
Darwin himself warned against this. His work had shown that RANDOM mutations were either more or less adaptive to an organism’s environment.

12. Social Darwinism:
Social Darwinism is the idea that all things human operate on the premise of ‘survival of the fittest.’
The poor were weak, the prosperous were the ‘chosen strong.’
The belief that the suffering of the poor was a natural process that would eventually benefit all of humanity became a popular belief among the upper middle classes.

13. Social Darwinism:
Social Darwinism is actually closer to ‘selective breeding’ than it is to random adaptation.
Selective breeding is what humans have been doing for thousands of years with cattle, dogs, cats, etc.
Social Darwinism justified the wealth of the upper classes, as they felt part of a natural culling process defined by a tragic mis-application of Darwin’s unfortunate term ‘survival of the fittest.’

14. other mis-applications: Physical Anthropology, Organicism, and Eugenics
Physical Anthropology was used as an explanation for a construct that confirmed a racial hierarchy.
Measuring the physical size of a person’s skull was thought to be a way of measuring the intellectual capacity of a human being. (that is complete nonsense)

16. Organicism:
The idea that a nation-state was just another organism, and that it must be prepared to compete to become ‘the fittest.’
Military build-up, weapons development, removal of any people that might be considered ‘weak’ or could be compared to a ‘virus.’

17. Organicism:
The notion that a nation was a ‘social organism’ suggested that it was subject to ‘viruses’ and needed to be ‘protected’ by ensuring that its citizens were ‘of pure blood.’

18. Eugenics:
By turning Darwin’s process of natural selection around backwards, popular academics like Alfred Ploetz and Houston Stewart Chamberlain suggested that a nation’s people could be ‘improved’ using SELECTIVE methods.
The pseudo-science of ‘Race Hygiene’ began in Germany and elsewhere. (In the United States too, between 1895 and 1925)

21. Eugenics:
University of Vienna
By the 1920s, there were over 70 university department chairs of ‘Race Hygiene in Europe, most of them in Germany. (entire departments within world-renowned universities)

22. Darwin repeatedly tried to point out these misapplications of his work, but they attained a life of their own beyond his lifetime.
Social Darwinism, Organicism, and Eugenics are ALL pseudo-sciences that are scorned for what they are today, but they were considered legitimate academic science between 1880 and

23. [ insert Hitler here]