Social Darwinism

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Social Darwinism. After the publication of Charles Darwin’s masterpiece On the Origin of Species in 1859, some thinkers argued that Darwin’s ideas about evolution could also be applied to human society. One thinker particularly associated with this movement was Darwin’s near-contemporary Herbert Spencer, who coined the phrase ‘survival of the fittest’. He argued that competition among humans was beneficial, because it ensured that only the healthiest and most intelligent individuals would succeed. Social Darwinism remained influential for several generations, although its association with eugenics and later adoption as an ideological position by Fascist regimes ensured its eventual downfall from intellectual respectability.

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Guests

• Adam Kuper 3 episodes
  Centennial Professor of Anthropology at the LSE, University of London
• Gregory Radick No other episodes
  Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Leeds
• Charlotte Sleigh No other episodes
  Reader in the History of Science at the University of Kent

Reading list

• Social Darwinism: Science and Myth in Anglo-American Social Thought
  Robert C. Bannister (Temple University Press, 1988) Google Books →
• Darwin's Coat-Tails: Essays on Social Darwinism
  Paul Crook (Peter Lang, 2007) Google Books →
• The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex
  Charles Darwin (John Murray, 1871) Google Books →
• In Search of Human Nature: The Decline and Revival of Darwinism in American Social Thought
  Carl Degler (Oxford University Press, 1992) Google Books →
• Dinosaur in a Haystack: Reflections in Natural History
  Stephen Jay Gould (Jonathan Cape, 1996) Google Books →
• Social Darwinism in European and American Thought 1860-1945: Nature as Model and Nature as Threat
  Mike Hawkins (Cambridge University Press, 1997) Google Books →
• The Cambridge Companion to Darwin
  J. Hodge and G. Radick (eds.) (Cambridge University Press, 2009) Google Books →
• Social Darwinism in American Thought
  Richard Hofstadter (Beacon Press, 1992) Google Books →
• Love and Eugenics in the Late Nineteenth Century: Rational Reproduction and the New Woman
  Angelique Richardson (Oxford University Press, 2003) Google Books →
• After Darwin: Animals, Emotions, and the Mind
  Angelique Richardson (ed.) (Rodopi, 2013) Google Books →
• Reflecting on Darwin
  Eckart Voigts, Barbara Schaff, Monika Pietrzak-Franger (eds.) (Ashgate, 2014) Google Books →

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Programme ID: b03vgq1q

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03vgq1q

Auto-category: 300 (Social Sciences)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

Hello. When Charles Darwin published his masterpiece on the origin of species by means of natural selection in 1859, he laid the foundations for a new era in scientific enquiry.