Social Darwinism and the Science of Race

In 1859 Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, explaining how living things evolve through natural selection. Some writers, notably the philosopher Herbert Spencer, who coined the phrase 'survival of the fittest' in 1864, applied ideas about competition to human societies, an approach later called Social Darwinism. Darwin's biology did not support ranking human groups, but Social Darwinists claimed that nations and so-called races were locked in a struggle in which the strong were destined to dominate.

Pseudo-scientific racism, which ranked peoples by skull measurements and other false methods, gave these claims a scientific appearance. Such ideas were used to justify conquest, unequal laws and violence as natural or even beneficial. Modern genetics has shown that humans are a single species with no biological basis for racial hierarchies. Studying these ideas shows how science can be misused to serve political goals.