Darwinian Ideas How Much Influence Term Paper

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Such an ascription "both distorts the substance of his thought and grossly exaggerates his actual influence on the politics of his country."

He exerted "little influence" on American politics, Trask continues, though Sumner "praised modern capitalism," believed that the doctrine of "laissez faire is just as applicable to society as it is to the economy," for, "the social order," Trask explains, "like the economy, is government by its own laws and logic of development."

Trask spends a good deal of his article insisting that Sumner's views are more like today's Libertarian views ("society does not need any care of supervision...society [just needs to be] freed from these meddlers..." e.g., big government, Trask paraphrases) than they are in the genre of Social Darwinism.

There may be some degree of truth to what Trask (by the very fact that he is writing in the Journal of Libertarian Studies he becomes in effect a PR spokesman, and clearly an advocate, for Libertarian politics) says about Sumner, but in the Columbia Encyclopedia - which paraphrases five respected books critiquing Sumner's life and scholarship), Sumner did follow Darwinian motifs and themes.

As a sociologist he did valuable work in charting the evolution of human customs - folkways and mores," the Columbia reference article explains. "He concluded that the power of these forces, developed in the course of human evolution, rendered useless any attempts at social reform.

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He also authored the term "ethnocentrism," which is used to "designate attitudes of superiority about one's own group in comparison with others," the article on Sumner continues. But meantime, as to the question - "What ideas did Sumner take from Darwin, and how did he apply them to social problems?" - Sumner took Darwin's evolutionary ideas and placed them into a political context, saying basically that no government can truly give a nation democracy, because the laws of nature are in control, and those laws will evolve as they wish to on their own time.

Lester Frank Ward, a contemporary of Sumner, is probably best known for a theory of planned progress called Telesis, "whereby man, through education and development of intellect, could direct social evolution" (Columbia Encyclopedia). According to an article in Society (McClay, 1995), he is best known for his "passionate defense of a progressive 'reform' Darwinism, the logical opposite to the laissez-faire 'social Darwinism'," which is attributed to his "arch-rivals William Graham Sumner and Herbert Spencer."

What stains Ward's reputation is that he is a one-time advocate for the "welfare state"; however, in this day and age, when "welfare" is looked down on, and cutbacks are more common than hand-outs, his legacy is not as glossy as Spencer and Sumner......

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