In Memory of Charlie Darwin

In 10th grade, we talked about the three great "Humiliations" of mankind: the Copernican revolution, which showed we are not at the center of the universe, evolution by natural selection, which showed we are not the crown of creation, and psychoanalysis, which showed we might not be in control of our own thoughts. We've discussed one already (Copernicus) in this course, and on Darwin's 200th birthday we're talking about the second. Darwin's hypothesis had a deeply disturbing impact on many people. It took mankind off its pedestal, it encroached on a religious explanation of the natural world, and it posed a further challenge to the Enlightenment social paradigm. As biology, it's irrefutable. However, it quickly became co-opted by racial apologists, nationalists, and members of the middle class as pseudo-scientific 'Social Darwinism'. What I think this shows most is simply that revolutions in our understanding of the world always precipitate a change in how society looks at itself, and the idea behind the scientific revolution can often become the idea behind a cultural revolution. 

Interestingly, 'Social Darwinism' wasn't in response to something new--it was taking a new idea and using it to deal with a pre-existing issue of growing inequality (another challenge to the Enlightenment paradigm).  So in this case, the process worked in reverse (even though Darwin's was in no way intended to defend imperialism or such thing).