Social Evolution

An influential book from 1894 on the need for a comprehensive science of human society and human progress.

Benjamin Kidd (Author)

9781108004527, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 20 July 2009

360 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2 cm, 0.53 kg

In 1894, the British sociologist Benjamin Kidd published Social Evolution, an influential book that summarised and evaluated the prevailing social theories at the end of the nineteenth century: Karl Marx's socialism and Herbert Spencer's social Darwinism. Both of these conflicting theories were based on Darwinian evolutionary theory. In this book, Kidd discusses the immense changes that applied science has brought to the world and the interconnectedness of everyone. The book's ten chapters include discussions of the conditions of human progress, the function of religious beliefs, and the organisation of the working classes. Kidd found flaws in both Karl Marx's and Herbert Spencer's vision of society's future and concluded that religion was essential for the evolution of society because it acts in the interest of generational group survival rather than individual competition. Social Evolution called for a comprehensive study of society because a new era in Western civilisation was beginning.

1. The outlook
2. Conditions of human progress
3. There is no rational sanction for the conditions of progress
4. The central feature of human history
5. The function of religious beliefs in the evolution of society
6. Western civilisation
7. Western civilisation (continued)
8. Modern socialism
9. Human evolution is not primarily intellectual
10. Concluding remarks
Appendices.

Subject Areas: Philosophy of religion [HRAB]