06.24.09
On the origin of Darwin myths? Darwin
On the origin of the Darwin myths
Ever been told by a ruthless boss that, “as Charles Darwin said, it’s survival of the fittest”?
Rather than answering that it was actually a one-time sub editor for The Economist magazine, Herbert Spencer, who coined the phrase, or fighting back with an equally wrong comment about someone being descended from monkeys, Darwin academics are calling for a moratorium on the everyday use and abuse of the great naturalist.
Two-hundred years after he was born, and 150 years after he published “On the Origin of Species”, it’s time to check the facts, as “most of what most people think they know about him is not true,” according to Darwin scholar John van Wyhe, a historian of science at the University of Cambridge
Are these ‘academics’ kidding? Are they misinformed, or just lying. It is true that there is an influence of Spencer on the Social Darwinism that arose in Darwin’s wake. But in the end Darwin’s obsession with natural selection was/is what generated that confusion. It is the implications of the mechanism proposed, and not Spencer’s terminology, that is finally responsible.
And the darker side of Darwin simply can’t be written off. We don’t even know if he is the real source of this theory, as Roy Davies makes clear in The Darwin Conspiracy.
These hagiographic obsessions are harmful and quite unnecessary. It is a cultic, not a scientific phenomenon.
No moratorium, then. Time to finish off this phony scientist.
Darwiniana » Darwin the social darwinist said,
June 24, 2009 at 3:40 pm
[...] article calling for a moratorium on the ‘the everyday use and abuse of the great naturalist’ deserves some commentary, and a bit of scorn, and not a little wonder that these academics would [...]