Darwinism and Nationalism?

Question

What do you think Charles Darwin would say about nationalism? What would he say about internationalism? About nationalism and it's connection (or disconnect) with evolution?

Humans do "survive in groups" and are social animals...however, does original Darwinian thought (not Social Darwinism, but that of Stephen Jay Gould, etc) say anything about nationalism and politics?

Answer 1

Darwin had little to say on those things, scientifically, though many others, including you, it seems, have misinterpreted a simple theory on origin of species into some political rant.

Answer 2

The evolutionary science that Stephen Jay Gould understood is far advanced from Darwin's musings, so whatever Darwin may have said about class or nationality is not necessarily a part of modern evolutionary thought. Social Darwinism has never been a part of the scientific theory that bears Darwin's name; and the name of his book was NOT "The Origin of the Species," it was "The Origin of Species," that's ALL species not just humans.

Nationalism and politics,or identifying oneself with any particular group, is explained as a part of altruism and kin-identification.

Answer 3

Darwin was way ahead of his time.  By the time he wrote VOYAGE, DESCENT AND ORIGIN he was so far past everybody else his detractors had to brand him a heretic simply to face their famalies in the morning; their arguments against his scientific investigations and data were so compelling and immense.

The problem, and it's a serious one, is that most of the discussion about "Race" nowadays is based on a paradigm, which distinguishes ethnic groups based on the fallacy(the process by which a false English argument is proved to be true) that peoples of African-extraction in America--3,5, & 7 generations removed from the African Slave trade and slavery in America, were not and are not human beings. It's not only offensive to people of the aforementioned descent, but it is not correct: biologically in terms of genetics and anthropologically in terms of our species common ancestor.

REASONS the term "RACE"

(1 Biologically: all human beings have the same genetic compliment in terms of chromosomes(23 from the mother and 23 from the father=46 in all)

(2 Anthropologically: all human beings (Homo Sapiens) can trace their roots from Australopithecus, Robustus, Boisie, Neanderthals, Cromagnon, Homo Erectus, Homo Habilius, Homo Sapien to a common ancestor in Africa.

Yes, millions of years of evolution and we have not learned much.

The "issue"--and it's a serious one, is REALLY about "Social Equality" and power: social, political, and economic--"who" has it and "who" does not have it--PERIOD, OR THE LACK THEREOF for people of color since the beinging of the history of slavery in America, the US Constitution and the fallacy therein, which defined people os color as non-sentient beings, the SLAVE CODES which allowed it to florish and the Civil War, which was fought to preserve said slavery and all the fallout today because of our inability to look at the dark and wicked corners of our history as Americans. There is no such thing as "racial minority" outside of the context of an obsolete paradigm, which in 50 years isn't going to mean anything to anybody anyway. That's the word.

Answer 4

The poster above refering to Darwin's book is telling a deliberate lie.

While Darwin's original title did include the word races, Darwin used the word race to refer to groups within a species... the "race" of fan tailed pidgeons versus non-fan tailed pidgeons, for example.

Origin of the Species does not discuss MANKIND AT ALL, and doesn't even have the word evolution in it.

Original Darwinian thought has nothing to say about nationalism, I'm afraid. Darwin even made a distinction between natural selection and variation under domesticity to make it clear that if mankind was involved it was not natural selection.

I think the nationalist movements of the twentieth century would've seemed very weird to Darwin, and that if we were able to bring him to our time, he'd seem nationalist to US, even though he wasn't what was considered nationalistic at the time.

Socially, he was a man of his times, maybe a little more advanced morally, as a result of his upbringing, but not anything resembling a 20th (or 21st) century Englishman.

Answer 5

It isn't a matter of speculation,  the title of his book was 'Origins of the species and the preservation of favored races'   There were chapters on why the English were superior to the Irish  and  the westerns superior to the blacks

Sadly Mr Darwin even orders some Australian aborigines to be captured alive and brought back to merry old England to be taxidermied...  

Charles Darwin was unmistakenly both a racists and a nationalist but no doubt there will be historical revisionism galore with regard to Darwin

It is very clear form the contents of Darwin's book and actions he was quite comfortable with social Darwinism  The late Stephen J Gould would have modified Darwins original theory in a more poliitcally correct way.  I would not agree with either  and favor the Biblical view of the origin of man