Volume 38 - Issue 3 - 177 - 192

The Misuse and Abuse of Darwinian Concepts in Social Theory (or was Darwin a Social Darwinist?)



There are many remarks about Darwinian concepts of “selection” and “nature” in social science literature especially in the 19th century philosophy. Social sciences such as sociology, psychology and economics have been developed in the 19th century mainly imitating and trying to be similar with natural sciences methodologically.

Scientific developments begin with the protruding of the principle of inferring the knowledge on the world of objects through inspection and experiment. Classically, it was Bacon who was the most provocative philosopher of his era insisting on the value of this kind of knowledge. Bacon’s major argument was to analyze the objects as they are and to research on the comprehension possibilities of humans on that matter; but not to try to pursue how to reach the God in a transcendentally and search for wisdom by equipping objects with meaning like scholastics such as Thomas Aquinas and Tertulianus1. Scientific/positivist epistemology developed on this basis. Understanding the nature, by first examining the object, trying to settle the relationships among objects via tools out of transcendental processes going through independent from those objects and reaching general conclusions were the basic aims of this new methodology. 



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