social evolution

Yet it should not be imagined that revolution by force or radical remodeling inspired every thinking European. Even if liberals and reactionaries were still ready to take to the barricades to achieve their ends, the conservatives were not, except in self-defense. The conservative philosophy,…

…engines, perhaps he could also engineer an improved society. Because evolution was at last “proved,” thanks to Darwin, perhaps it also gave warrant for social and political progress by gradual steps. Spencer’s all-inclusive philosophy, likened then to Aristotle’s, foresaw an inevitable movement from the simple and undifferentiated to the complex…

…dialectic to a kind of evolutionism. He laid stress on the increasing pauperization of the working class and on the increasing degree of capitalist concentration. While opposing all compromise with the bourgeois state, he accepted the contention that the socialist movement should support laws benefiting the workers provided that they…

(2) Evolution takes place in leaps, not gradually. (3) Contradictions must be made manifest. All phenomena contain in themselves contradictory elements. “Dialectic starts from the point of view that objects and natural phenomena imply internal contradictions, because they all have a positive and a negative side.”…

…an approach based on Darwinian evolutionary theory. In their attempts to establish a scientifically based academic discipline, a line of creative thinkers, including Herbert Spencer, Benjamin Kidd, Lewis H. Morgan, E.B. Tylor, and L.T. Hobhouse, developed analogies between human society and the biological organism. They introduced

…a parallel theory of progressive social evolution that refuted the traditional religious understanding of human sin, which was predicated on the notion that, after the fall from grace, the human condition was corrupt beyond repair. Meanwhile, some ministers in various denominations ceased to emphasize the conversion of individuals to the…

…major concept was that of developmental change. Its ultimate roots in Western thought, like those indeed of the whole idea of structure, go back to the Greeks, if not earlier. But it is in the 18th century, above all others, that the philosophy of developmentalism took shape, forming a preview,…

As a collectivity, a social movement is characterized by an emergent social structure and a culture. The social structure is reflected in the relationship between leaders and followers, the culture in the values and norms.

…normal accompaniment and medium for social change, relatively absent in periods of social stability. With the more or less continuous shifts of values in any society, emerging values are first given group expression in collective behavior; efforts to revitalize declining values also bring forth collective behavior. Again, the constant readjustments…

…merely a shadow cast by passing events. Scattered collective behavior is endemic in every society. But when there is widespread discontent, collective behavior soon becomes a prominent feature of group life. When there are no exciting new ideas—such as the liberal humanitarian vision of the 18th and 19th centuries, the…

…scheme of evolution is the socialization of mankind. This is not the triumph of herd instinct but a cultural convergence of humanity toward a single society. Evolution has gone about as far as it can to perfect human beings physically: its next step will be social. Teilhard saw such evolution…