In the distant future I see open fields for far more important researches…. Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history” (Darwin 1859, 488). This statement, which appears in the concluding chapter to the Origin of Species, was Darwin’s only mention of human evolution in the entire book. He was well aware of the difficulties his biological propositions would encounter from believers in special creation and therefore thought it wise to leave the delicate question of human evolution aside for the time being. Darwin was nonetheless fully conscious that his theory would lead to important insights in this domain and would probably revolutionize the way we think about ourselves and our cultures. Enter social Darwinism.

The term social Darwinism, which came into fashion after 1940 (Hodgson 2004), has been used mainly to decry doctrines that justify some form of individual, social, or racial superiority through evolutionary principles with which Darwin’s theory is identified, such as the struggle for existence and natural selection. It has also been employed in reference to teleological explanations of the causes of human progress that often carry with them value judgments concerning the degree of civilization attained by various peoples. Yet many of the positions typically attached to social Darwinism do not correspond to this stereotypical description. Even among the main proponents of evolutionary theory in the nineteenth century – Darwin, Wallace, Huxley, and Spencer – there were important disagreements concerning the process of evolution in humans and its results. This article offers an examination of their claims, as well as some related and antagonistic viewpoints, in an effort to tease out the various and complex meanings of social Darwinism. By tuning the microscope to grasp the finer details, a surprisingly different picture from the one usually conveyed by this blanket term will emerge.