The origins of darwinism

Origins of the myth of social Darwinism: The ambiguous legacy of Richard Hofstadter’s Social Darwinism in American Thought

The term “social Darwinism” owes its currency and many of its connotations to Richard Hofstadter’s influential Social Darwinism in American Thought, 1860–1915 (SDAT). The postSDATmeanings of “social Darwinism” are the product of an unresolvedWhiggish tension in SDAT: Hofstadter championed economic reform over free markets, but he also condemned biology in social science, this while many progres...

Darwinism and social Darwinism.

The Evolution of Darwinism

W hen biologists refer to the theory of evolution nowa­ days, they are usually think­ ing not of Charles Darwin'S original statement of the theory but of a modi­ fied and expanded version of Darwin­ ism that took shape in the 1930's and 1940's. First known as the Neo-Dar­ winian theory and later as the synthet­ ic theory, it affirmed the fundamental tenets of Darwinism. It held that evo­ lution...

Darwinism

The Challenge of Neural Darwinism