Evolutionism in the Social Sciences

The definition of Social Anthropology has evolved over the course of the last 200 years, even before so when Social Anthropology wasn’t even a science but rather individuals such as travellers and missionaries took notes on the various people they encountered on their travels. The earliest definition of Social Anthropology, was more inclined to study the physical attributes of other cultures, as man the animal. It later, in the mid to late nineteenth centaury, progressed to “the study of primitive cultures”. Now today it is more generally known as “the study of other cultures”, although today the term “Social Anthropology” still means the study of primitive cultures to many.

Evolutionism can be put into two categories: Biological and Social. Social Evolutionism was thought of early and the general public could easily accept the idea of cultures evolving through technology and advancements in ideas. As long as the Western world was considered to be the most advanced and evolved. Biological evolution was an entirely different case, as its theories were in total contrast of those in the bible regarding the origin of man. When Charles Darwin (1809-1882) first published his findings in 1859 (Origin of Species), very few people actually bothered to read while the rest ignored his research and branded it ludicrous and blasphemous. The concept that we had derived and evolved from apes was unthinkable at the time. Darwin wasn’t the only one to come up with this theory at around the same time. Alfred Wallace (1823-1913) also developed a theory on evolution. Darwin, impressed with Wallace’s work, read both Wallace’s paper and his own to the Linnean Society in 1858. Both men’s ideas and work were virtually the same. “Within a group, there were always small individual differences”, it was because of these difference that some lived and some did not. While the church rejected these ideas, the scholarly community embraced them.

Darwin’s and Wallace’s findings interested Herbert Spencer and led way to Spencerism, better known as social Darwism. It was Spencer who coined the phrase “survival of the fittest”, the application of the same principles to social conditions. He used Darwin’s ideas of biochange and applied them to culture, he further used Darwin’s work to reimburse his own ideas and theories

Social Darwism was quickly used to advance Western thoughts of status, imperialism and racism, a law that the strongest rase or society would soon replace the weaker. In this case, the Western culture through imperialism. “Thus would civilisation ...

This is a preview of the whole essay

The goal of Anthropology, in the early nineteenth centaury, was to study primitive man and in those days fossils were in very limited numbers, but still put forth the idea of superior and inferior humans. It was only later that the independent discipline of Sociology and Anthropology were put into one group. Social Anthropology was intended to be a natural science, to study human society.

Unlike in our present, the first “Social Anthropologists” did little fieldwork and rather relied on work collected from, as I’ve mentioned before, missionaries, government personnel (working in colonies) and travellers. The work they did was purely theoretical, although accurate; they had inadequate information. This doesn’t apply to all though. The explorer Fray Bernadino de Sahagun lived with the Aztecs for many years and acquired a decent amount of information, noting everything from their culture and their language. Also is the case with the French missionary, Joseph Francois Lafitau (1681-1746) who gathered priceless information on the American northeast Indians. Despite these two, many never accomplished any fieldwork. There are only two men, in the late nineteenth century, who could be considered true professional Social Anthologists: The American Lewis Henry Morgan (1818-1881) and the Englishman Edward Burnett Taylor. Both these men drew heavily on the idea of evolution through a social Darwism view of human progress. Using data they collected on their own, as well as data others collected, they were able to write full papers with rich and necessary detail.

Morgan studied the North American Indians and published the book Ancient Society in 1877 and developed upon the original idea of classification of the evolution of man earlier developed by the French philosopher Montesquieu: Savagery, Barbarism and Civilized. He added layers to these in the form of Lower, Middle and Upper. He used no typical groups in defining these but was clear on what each meant such as lower savagery included the beginning of man and the discovery of fire, as well as language and the concept of property. Civilisation is a total contrast and includes a phonetic alphabet, monogamy and intensive agricultural production. Civilisation is not only modern Europe, but also the ancient Egyptians and Romans. His proofs are not recognisable today as he sometimes forced data to fit with his theory and ignored other findings, such as those of Capt. Cook. Regardless, his work laid way for many of today’s Social Anthropologists.