Talk:Economics

Social Darwinism and Eugenics, through the times.

Outline for Wiki

Senior Seminar:

Introduction:

   * Give a Background of Eugenics

How it all started:

   * Darwins theory of evolution(define and explain)

Origins:

   * Social Darwinism: Social Darwinism is a belief, popular in the late Victorian era in England, America, and elsewhere, which states that the strongest or fittest should survive and flourish in society, while the weak and unfit should be allowed to die. The theory was chiefly expounded by Herbert Spencer, whose ethical philosophies always held an elitist view and received a boost from the application of Darwinian ideas such as adaptation and natural selection.
   * Social Darwinism in USA
   * Social Darwinism in UK

Evolution of darwins theory through the years and its misapplications:

· Scala Natura- The ladder is based upon the pre-Darwinian scala naturae, founded by Aristotle in a time when species were thought to be static essences created individually by God. The scala naturae organised both living and inanimate objects on a ladder, with Humans, or sometimes supernatural beings at the top.

· Laissez-faire Economics and Biology- The Darwinian worldview was critical, not only in influencing the development of Nazism and communism, but also in the rise of the ruthless capitalists that flourished in the late 1800s and early 1900s (Morris and Morris, 1996). A key aspect of this brand of capitalism was its extreme individualism which indicated that other persons count for little, and that it is both natural and proper to exploit "weaker" companies.

· Herbert Spencer- (social evolution) Spencer thought of evolution as involving much more than biology. For him, evolution pervaded the inorganic as well as the organic realm. His voluminous work also treated "superorganic evolution" (which we today would term social evolution), and evolution of "superorganic products" (what we call cultural evolution).

· Eugenics and Galton -

· Intelligence Quotient- William Stern theory claimed that core intelligence was innate. Many psychologists in America and England supported that conclusion.

· Darwinism-

Well known evolutionarists and their contributions:

· William Paley

· Charles Darwin

· Gregor Mendel (1823-1884) On Mendel Discovered the theory of heredity

   * Charles Lyell (1797-1875)-- Uniformitarianism rather than Catastrophism: geological formations required   many millennia to develop.
     Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913)--independently proposed evolutionary mechanism.
   * Thomas Huxley (1825-1895)-- major publicizer of evolution, epiphenomenologist

Early Animal Psychology

   * George Romanes (1848-1894)) anecdotal stories of animal intelligence, a comparative psychology Anecdotal methods.
   * C. Lloyd Morgan (1852-1936) Morgan's canon, limit interpretations of behavior to as simple mental processes as is compatible with the data.
   * Jacques Loeb (1859-1924) tropisms--movements have elementary physico-chemical explanations.
   * Willard Small (1870-1943) maze learning of laboratory rat.
   * Ivan Sechenov (1829-1905) Thoughts are reflexes of the brain. Inhibitory and excitatory reflexive action.

· Francis Galton (1822-1911) Promulgated Darwin's individual differences idea.

· Karl Pearson (1857-1936) invented the correlation coefficient. Many psychologists use this measure as a component in their research and theory.

Timeline

   * 322 BCE Aristotle introduces the concept of the Great Chain of Being.
   * 1640 Descartes, 1663 Spinoza, and 1680 Leibniz rely on this concept of progressive perfection as sufficient proof of the existence of God.
   * 1776 Adam Smith publishes On the Wealth of Nations
   * 1857 Herbert Spencer begins publishing sociologic / economic works on Progress and Social Evolution. He was to be greatly influenced by his later reading of Darwin.
   * 1859 Darwin publishes first edition of On the Origin of Species
   * 1860 Karl Marx, in a letter to Frederich Engels, cites Darwin's tome as "the book which contains the basis in natural history for our views." Marx was later to attempt to dedicate Das Kapital to Darwin, but the latter declined the honor.
   * 1872 Walter Bagehot publishes Physics and Politics, perhaps the first clear statement that nations "evolved" from intergroup struggles.
   * 1869 Sir Francis Galton begins (Hereditary Genius) a series of works laying the foundations for the Eugenics movement.
   * 1909 Alfred Binet lays the foundations for standardized intelligence testing.
   * 1911 Friedrich von Bernhardi fashioned an evolutionary argument for Germany and the Next War. This interpretation was sufficient to drive not one but two great wars.
   * 1917 The great Army Alpha and Beta intelligence tests are administered to a wide group of recruits. The data so collected will be misanalized for years.
   * 1924 Immigration Restriction Act. fixed new immigrants at quotas of 2% of those nations' representation in the 1890 census. Why 1890? Southern and Eastern Europeans didn't begin to emigrate to this country until after that date.
   * 1927 Carrie Buck is sterilized by the state of Virginia, on account of being feebleminded.
   * 1928 Carrie's sister Doris is also sterilized.
   * 1930s Eugenics movement largely ran out of steam with the Great Depression.
   * 1972 Virginia stops involuntary sterilization of the feebleminded and antisocial.
   * 1979 Arthur Jensen's Bias in Mental Testing attempts to make the case for racial differences in intelligence quotient.
   * 1994 Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray publish The Bell Curve

Eugenics in different locations:

· US:

o Introduction

o Implementation

o flaws

· UK

o Introduction

o Implementation

o flaws

· Canada

o Introduction

o Implementation

o flaws

· Japan

o Introduction

o Implementation

o flaws

· Australia

o Introduction

o Implementation

o flaws

· Sweden

o Introduction

o Implementation

o flaws

Source

http://www.ouuf.org/Sermons/SocialDarwinism.html

http://library.thinkquest.org/C004367/eh4.shtml

http://www.progressivehumanism.com/undevltn.html

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/evolution/mg15420776.100

http://www.cas.buffalo.edu/classes/psy/segal/4212001/evolution.htm