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Great Minds, the Gilded Age, and the Triumph of Evolution in America
by Barry WerthThis article relates to Banquet at Delmonico's
It may seem that the concept of globalization is a very new one, and that
the growth of free trade and its accompanying controversy belong to our era
alone. In fact, the 1860s saw an explosion of trade between nations, accompanied
by a doctrine of free markets unbridled by government intervention. Unlike
today, though, many of the free marketeers of this earlier era were willing to
apply their logic outside the realm of economics, to human societies and to
human beings themselves.
These are the Social Darwinists (sometimes called Social Positivists) whose
thinking stood behind the great economic expansion, was challenged by a global
recession, and ultimately fell out of favor in the United States when the
princely accumulation of wealth and power by a generation of Robber Barons was
recognized as jarringly undemocratic.
The intellectual grandfather of the Social Darwinists was a Frenchman named
August Comte, who argued that the progress of science would ultimately yield a
perfect society. This faith in rational pursuits was transformed by the English
philosopher Herbert Spencer into a belief that rationally sound laws could lead
to the perfection of the human race, if only they were allowed to operate
without interference.
Spencer and his many followers built on the older concept that humans in their
natural state are locked in constant warfare with one another. To this they
added the essentially Darwinian view that the struggle for survival will
naturally result in the most fit emerging as the victors.
In practice, these arguments were used to justify unfettered accumulation of wealth by the few, racial superiority and imperial conquest.
Image: Isidore Auguste Marie François Xavier Comte (1798-1857)
Filed under Medicine, Science and Tech
This "beyond the book article" relates to Banquet at Delmonico's. It originally ran in January 2009 and has been updated for the April 2011 paperback edition. Go to magazine.
Happiness belongs to the self sufficient
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