Nicola,

 

David’s statement is a bit difficult to refute in the way that it is phrased!  I remain committed to the view that Social Darwinism was important in economics at that time and place.  I wrote about this in:

 

“Evolutionary Metaphors in Explanations of American Industrial Competition” (1995) in Biology as Society, Society as Biology: Metaphors, Sociology of Science Yearbook 1994, Volume XVIII, eds: S. Maasen, E. Mendelsohn and P. Weingart (Kluwer, pp 311-337).

 

And a bit in

“Competing Views of Competition in Late-Nineteenth Century American Economics” (1993) History of Political Economy, 25:4 563-604.

 

There are a couple of other papers in the first mentioned volume which deal with Social Darwinism.

 

Mary

 

 

 

Hi everybody.

I have always thought that Social Darwinist ideas met huge success in post Civil War America. However, I recently ran into this old statement by historian David Hollinger who, referring to the American case, wrote: “Social Darwinism can now claim a dubious honor: that it has been shown not to have existed in more places than any other movement in the history of social theory” (Annals of Science, 1976, vol.33, p.476).

 

Can anyone help with some recent literature on the true spread of Social Darwinist views in the US? Note that I am NOT interested in interpretations of Spencer, etc., but only in data proving (or disproving) Hollinger’s words, if any exist.

 

Thanks a lot,

Nicola Giocoli

University of Pisa