August 28, 2019 Wednesday
Bedtime Story
Herbert Spencer and Ernst Haeckel
“This preservation, during the battle for
life, of varieties which possess any advantage in structure, constitution, or
instinct, I have called Natural Selection; and Mr. Herbert Spencer has well
expressed the same idea by the Survival of the Fittest.
The term ‘natural selection’ is in some
respects a bad one, as it seems to imply conscious choice; but this will be
disregarded after a little familiarity.”
All this evolutionary biology was fine up
till the point Spencer began to introduce the ideas of evolutionary biology
into sociology.
The idea of his is today known by the name
of Social Darwinism which arose exactly at the time of Gilded Age in the United
States and gained wide spread popularity all over Europe as well particularly
among the few lucky wealthy.
It is the direct application of the
concepts of biological natural selection and survival of the fittest to both
society and politics.
At its core is the belief that just as nature
is red in tooth and claws and only the fittest is allowed to survive by
allowing the evolution of complex characteristics in a species such as ultra
fine and complicated visual system to keep track of both the food and dangers,
razor sharp claws and fangs to hunt down the prey and appendages for ultra
swift movements enabling both the hunt for food and escape from the predators,
analogous laws must be allowed to flourish in human societies as well.
Not only should the strong (which meant
wealthy and politically powerful men and nations) be allowed to get stronger
and powerful (meaning they ought not to be taxed extra by the government or any
such distributive measures usually imposed by governments/monarchies) but the
weak of the society should actively not be given any aid and allowed to wither
away.
This meant that our humanitarian impulse if
any should be resisted upon and not allowed to prevail over the natural law of
the jungle.
It is the extreme form of right-wing
economic and social ideology that propagates complete laissez-faire capitalism
and free competition unrestrained by any government controls and aid mechanism.
The British Herbert Spencer found a great
supporter in his views in the German zoologist, naturalist and philosopher
Ernst Haeckel who is otherwise more famous in biology for his recapitulation
theory that pithily states “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.”
This theory is today partly accepted
because even though embryology and embryo development does to some extent
reflect the course of evolution but that course is far from simple and direct
as proposed by Haeckel.
Different parts of the embryos can evolve
in different directions depending upon which genes are activated during their
formation.
Both Spencer and Haeckel of course did not
intend to mean that the poor must be left to die like the animals and plants
are left to in the jungles but more in the sense that economists imply when
they speak about constructive destruction and replacement of old businesses
with new ones in evolving economies.
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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