Darwin's method argued there was a natural variability between members of a given species (we now know that this is due to genetic variation). As a result of competition between individuals both of the same species and others, the less able died at earlier ages and so reproduced less often than those who were successful (either at surviving or attracting mates or both). These successful members passed on their genes to future generations causing the species to drift into new forms.
This relatively simple idea caused an enormous conflict between science and the church and an upheaval in our view of life including ourselves.
Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) was one of the most famous advocates of evolutionary ethics. Spencer believed that human society progressed through competition. Therefore, providing the weak with too much protection represented a loss to society as a whole. Spencer urged aggressively competitive relationships and justified not aiding the poor either at home or abroad. This view became known as 'social Darwinism' and led to furious debates between people of the left and right.
One of Spencer's chief opponents was Thomas Huxley (1825-1895) who was a great defender of Darwin. He declared that the physical process of evolution was opposed to human ethical development and that Darwin's theory of physical evolution held no lessons for how human beings should behave.
Another line of attack was that many of the stories in the bible were about behavior that was clearly immoral and often anti-social in nature. The critics asserted that these epics had been written by normal men in a primitive Judaic society and had little to offer us in terms of moral guidance.
Much of the progress of geology in the Nineteenth Century also tended to undermine the biblical story of creation. Charles Lyell (1797-1875) suggested that the earth was much, much older than the 6000 years ascribed by biblical scholars. Anthropologists, psychologists and sociologists suggested that religion itself was a natural phenomenon that could be studied with the methods of science. This implied strongly that religion was superstition and mythology.
The effect was devastating on the religious commitment of the upper middle class in most western European and North American societies. Many talented people who would have declared a vocation for priesthood or (in Protestant areas) the ministry instead went into science and technology. Whole generations of the poor passed without much direct contact with the various churches. Christianity (and Judaism) came to play a much reduced role in day to day life.
Among Protestants, many supported large-scale missionary efforts in Asia and Africa. Many converts were made in China and Africa. Most of the Pacific Islands became Christianized. Much in the way of cultural transference occurred. However, this deep penetration of local cultures by missionaries aroused a great deal of resentment and a revival of indigenous cultures.
Leo XIII (1878-1903) instead sought accommodation with the modern age. He was pursued by the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) which sought to reconcile faith and reason. In Rerum Novarum, Leo XIII defended private property, religious education and religious control of the marriage laws. The Pope urged that people from different classes organize themselves into corporate groups that would then co-operate with one another according to Christian principles. This vision of a corporate society remains the basic economic doctrine of the church and is the basis for the criticism of capitalism often voiced by Pope John Paul II.
Basically, scientists by the end of the nineteenth century came
to believe that they could not discover an ultimate 'truth' about the physical
universe. Rather, they could propose and test useful hypotheses by setting
forth hypothetical or symbolic models of nature. This remained the point
of view of the 'hard' sciences throughout the twentieth century. A series
of discoveries by Roentgen, Thomson and Rutherford explored the nature
of radioactivity and a theory of the electron that revolutionized both
physics and chemistry in the 1890's and early years of the twentieth century.
In 1900, Max Planck argued a theory of energy viewed as distinct packets.
Thus, the theory of quantum mechanics was born that was to dominate twentieth
century physics. This was followed five years later by Albert Einstein's
famous papers on relativity that both undermined and, eventually, replaced
classical, Newtonian physics. In 1927, Werner Heisenberg described the
uncertainty principle that introduced concepts of statistical probability
into science.
All of this produced a great negative reaction in the humanities that gradually produced a split with the sciences. Today, this dispute rages unabated and may even have deepened in the past ten years when post-modernism flourishes in the humanities and some of the social sciences.
Nietzche was one of the most famous of the late nineteenth century
philosophers. He urged that the non-rational aspects of human nature were
as important and noble as the rational characteristics. Limiting life to
its rational dimensions was to impoverish it. He advocated a heroic life
and artistic achievement. Both arose from sources beyond rationality. He
was one of the first to avoid discovering what is good and evil but instead
focus attention on the psychological bases for both. He glorified pride,
assertiveness and strength and derided meekness, humility and weakness.
Much of Nietche's philosophy was co-opted (and many say distorted) by the
Nazi's of the 1930's. After WWII, naturally, his point of view fell into
disfavor in the west.
Freud was a Jewish Austrian who practiced psychology in Vienna from the 1880's until the 1930's. He was a physician. In 1897, he had formulated a theory of infant sexuality that later became the foundation for his theory of the development of human personality. He radically questioned the concept of childhood innocence and emphasized the little-acknowledged matter of sex as a basis of mental order and disorder. This greatly shocked his contemporaries. He remained permanently a controversial figure. Freud placed great stock in the inner truth of dream as revelatory of people's innermost thoughts and motivations. In short, Freud founded the psychoanalytic movement.
The founder of sociology, Max Weber, regarded the emergence of rationalization
in throughout society as a major development of human history. He saw bureaucratization
as the most fundamental feature of modern social life. He opposed Marx's
view of capitalism as the driving force in modern society. Weber contended
that non-economic factors might account for major features of human history.
His most famous essay was The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
in which he traced most of the rational character of capitalist enterprise
to the ascetic religious doctrines of Puritanism. There were a substantial
number of other, less well-known writers of the era that explored the social
and psychological routes of social behavior.
Since at least the eighteenth century some scholars had classified
people by skin color, language and stage of civilization. Since the late
eighteenth century, many scholars noted the similarity of many of the European
languages to the ancient Sanskrit of India. They postulated the existence
of an ancient race of people that they called the Aryans who spoke an ancient
language from which most modern European languages were derived. The American
debates over slavery gave further opportunity for the development of a
racial theory that put white people at the top and black people at the
bottom of a supposed racial hierarchy. Gobineau was a reactionary French
diplomat was the first to propose a theory of race as the major determinant
of human history. He described the troubles of Western civilization to
a long degeneration of the original white Aryan race because of inter-marriage
with inferior Asian and African races. He saw no way to reverse this degeneracy
since it was based purely on racial inter-mixture. Govineau's views were
revived and popularized by an Englishman by the name of Chamberlain. Chamberlain
added the category of Jews as the major enemy of European racial regeneration
that he thought, optimistically, was still possible. This provided a basis
for the respectability of an ancient European habit, i.e. anti-Semitism.
The rapid spread of systematic anti-semitism during the first decades
of the twentieth century led increasingly to progroms (anti-Jewish riots
that killed and raped Jews and destroyed Jewish property). In this atmosphere,
some Jews came to the conclusions that the only path to survival for the
Jewish people was to leave Europe and to return to their original homeland
in Israel. The founder of this movement was Theodore Herzl (1860-1904)
who advocated the return to Zion (the land of Israel) and the creations
of a Zionist state. He directed his appeal to the poorest segments of the
Jewish community who were least satisfied with their situation in Europe.
After the birth of Germany and Italy in 1868-1870, nationalism spread
throughout the rest of Europe with every national group demanded political
independence. These sentiments were often reinforced by the rapidly growing
ranks of schoolteachers who inculcated love the 'fatherland' in many parts
of Europe. All too often, this nationalism was combined with racism and
hatred of the foreigners and the domestic Jews.
The Darwinians (including Darwin himself) revealed themselves as
contemptuous of women's abilities by contriving to exclude women from professional
societies with which they were associated. Any subject matter that referred
to sex and reproduction were considered unfit for female ears. Late Victorian
anthropologists tended to relegate women to an inferior position in the
prevailing view of the hierarchy of abilities of people in terms of race
and gender. Even Freud saw the destiny of women as mothers and homemakers
and was not comfortable treating them as peers in professional relationships.
Distinguished psychoanalysts such as Karen Horney and Melanie Klein later
would sharply challenge Freud's views of women. In summary, the era was
dominated by misogynists (women haters).
One of the ways in which this misogynist view was expressed was
in the area of sexual relationships. For example, women suspected of prostitution
in England were thrown into prison hospitals for treatment for months without
legal recourse. The law took no action against their male customers. The
sole purpose of the laws were protect sailors and soldiers from infection
without regard to the women's rights. This unequal treatment angered middle-class
women who began to actively oppose these laws. The acts were suspended
in 1883 and repealed in 1886 after being in force for decades. Similar
movements sprang up across western Europe, e.g. Austria.
Women began to advocate legal recognition of their rights to control
their own lives. Many of these women joined the socialist movement that
was the principal vehicle for protest politics of the day. Within that
context, Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own became one of the fundamental
texts of the feminist literature. By World War I, feminism had become associated
in the popular minds with challenges to the traditional structure of social
and economic roles in society. In turn, these were associated with political
radicalism and became the object for conservative attack. This mindset
persisted for the rest of the century.
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