From Comte to Benjamin Kidd
The Appeal to Biology or Evolution for Human Guidance

Robert Mackintosh, publishing in 1899, traces the connections between biology and sociology from Comte through Darwinism to Kidd's Social Evolution.

Robert Mackintosh (Author)

9781108004534, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 24 September 2009

316 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.8 cm, 0.47 kg

Robert Mackintosh (1858–1933), a professor at the Congregationalist Lancashire Independent College, traces the influence of biology and evolutionism on the study of human ethics and society during the second half of the nineteenth century in this 1899 book. He begins with Comte's founding of sociology, and continues with the renewed appeal to biology for the understanding of human affairs found in the work of Darwin, Spencer and their circle. He then looks at Benjamin Kidd's Social Evolution, published in 1894 (and also reissued in this series). Fifty years after Comte, Kidd argued that sociology required further grounding by a new recourse to biology. Mackintosh supported Kidd's view. If biological clues are to afford guidance for human conduct, Mackintosh contended, they must be supplemented by a clearer moral and religious vision, and in philosophy by some scheme of metaphysical evolutionism. His work marks a transition from Darwinism to a new Hegelianism.

Preface
1. Introduction
Part I. Comtism, with Some Scattered Parallels: 2. Comte's life and the principles of his teaching
3. The appeal to biology
4. The appeal to history
5. The doctrine of altruism
6. Comte's law-giving
Part II. Simple Evolutionism—Spencer, Stephen: 7. Darwinian and Spencerian conceptions of evolution—Darwin
8. Darwinian and Spencerian conceptions of evolution—Spencer
9. Mr. Spencer's three doctrines of human welfare
10. Mr. Leslie Stephen's 'Science of Ethics'
Part III. Darwinism, or Struggle for Existence: 11. 'Darwinism in Morals'—Miss Cobbe's protest
12. Darwinism in politics—Bagehot
13. Darwinism in ethics—Professor Alexander
14. Reaction from Darwinism—Huxley
15. Reaction from Darwinism—Drummond's 'Ascent of Man'
16. Reiteration of Darwinism: elimination made absolute—Mr. A. Sutherland
17. The metaphysics of natural selection
Part IV. Hyper-Darwinism—Weismann, Kidd: 18. 'Fairy Tale of Science'?
19. Hyper-Darwinism in sociology: struggle made absolute—Mr. Kidd
20. Summary and conclusions.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX]