Social Darwinism

Social Darwinism was the application of Charles Darwin's scientific theories of evolution and natural selection to contemporary social development. In nature, only the fittest survived so this must also be true in the marketplace. This form of justification was enthusiastically adopted by many American businessmen as scientific proof of their superiority and was used to justify imperialism abroad and cruel social policies at home. Social Darwinism was not a scientific theory, but a political ideology …

…German militarism and the rise of Nazism. Advances in anthropology at that time also discredited Social Darwinism. It has since evolved into the science of sociobiology, a study taking both biology and culture into account. This new science enjoyed a boom in the 1970's, but has declined in popularity since due to criticism that alleges sociobiology downplays the role of culture in human societies and justifies poverty and warfare in the name of natural selection .