August 27, 2019 Tuesday
Bedtime Story
Not Everyone Chose Philosophy of "The Gospel of Wealth"
Besides those named last night there must
be plenty more of their breed that made phenomenal wealth not only for
themselves but for the entire nation as well earning them the title of
“Captains of Industry”.
They are believed by many historians to
have created the core American industrial economy and at the same time through
their massive acts of philanthropy creating world-class institutions that would
not have been possible to be created by the government.
It was from the money donated by such men
that large chunk of grants came to be received by not tens or hundreds but
thousands of colleges, schools, public libraries, museums, hospitals, opera
houses and what not.
The figures of money donated by some of
them are simply staggering by any standards.
For instance, John D. Rockefeller donated
over $ 500 million!
It certainly is not the case that most of
these stupendously rich donated their wealth for many of them in contrast to
Andre Carnegie’s ideas spelt out views in “The Gospel of wealth” adhered to
something opposite.
Many wealthy Americans of the Gilded Age found
the ideas of Herbert Spencer far more attractive as it justified their greed
and unscrupulous behavior that was a necessary component in their endeavor to
accumulate wealth.
Spencer was the English biologist,
philosopher and a political theorist of the Victorian Era (that coincided with
the American Gilded Age) who had incorporated Darwinian evolution into
sociology and thereby to all aspects of society.
Contrary to what is believed by many the
term “survival of the fittest” was not used by Darwin but was introduced for
the first time and popularized by Herbert Spencer.
Darwin has an indirect association with
this term as Spencer coined this term in his 1864 work ‘Principles of Biology’
after reading Darwin’s ‘On the Origin of Species’.
The phrase that he used in the book and
where it first appeared was stated as thus:
“The survival of the fittest, which I have
her sought to express in mechanical terms, is that which Mr. Darwin has called ‘natural
selection’ or the preservation of favored races in the struggle for life.”
Just two years later when this phrase
caught the attention of the other British naturalist Alfred Russell Wallace he
wrote to Darwin in 1866 and pointed out that the term ‘natural selection’ was a
bit misleading as it gave the impression to the people that nature actively selected
certain species over the others which obviously wasn’t the case.
Wallace added that this misconception could
be avoided if Darwin avoided his own ‘natural selection’ and instead use
Spencer’s phrase ‘survival of the fittest’.
Darwin unlike most of us did not take this
suggest as a condescending remark and large heartedly accepted Wallace’s
suggestion.
In the book that Darwin published two years
later in 1868 that was titled ‘The Variation of Animals and Plants under
Domestication’ he wrote the following on page 6:
Stay tuned to the voice of an
average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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