3. Charles Darwin
❖1859, published On the Origin of Species
by Means of Natural Selection, or the
Preservation of the Favoured Races in the
Struggle for Life.
❖Darwin did not use the term “evolution.”
❖Set out to demonstrate that species of
animals were not special creations of God,
but evolved from common ancestors
through long process of gradual change.
4. ❖New species had come into existence
and many ceased to exist in a
continual process.
❖This view placed human beings
more among apes than angels.
❖Challenged traditional Christian
conception of God’s special creation
of all living beings.
Charles Darwin
5. ❖Idea of evolution connected with
changing views of the age of the Earth.
❖People generally thought the Earth
was young.
❖Darwin insisted that species
developed very slowly, through
evolutionary process, by adapting to
their environment.
Charles Darwin
6. ❖Species that could adapt
survived, and those with physical
or mental characteristics that could
not adapt passed out of existence.
❖Darwin spoke of “favoured”
races, those that were more suited
to their environment.
Charles Darwin
7. ❖Selection process was “natural,”
which implied that it was not
controlled by a deity.
❖Darwin thought of life as a
constant “struggle for existence.”
❖Through natural selection some
survived and others did not.
Charles Darwin
8. ❖Term “survival of the fittest,” was
adopted by Darwin from his
contemporary Herbert Spencer.
❖Darwin’s vision of progress differed
from that of the Enlightenment.
❖By progress, Darwin meant that
“higher” species emerged from “lower”
ones through a struggle within the
environment.
Charles Darwin
9. ❖Human beings were now at the
highest level of the evolutionary
ladder;
❖His ideas were used by those who
wished to argue that struggle among
people and nations was essential for
progress.
❖Used to justify imperialism.
Charles Darwin
10. ❖Some of Darwin’s contemporaries were horrified
by the process he described as he noted in the 2nd
edition of On the Origin of Species:
“It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank
clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds
singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting
about, and with worms crawling through the damp
earth, and to reflect that these elaborately
constructed forms, so different from each other, and
dependent on each other in so complex a manner,
have all been produced by laws acting around us.
Charles Darwin
11. “These laws, taken in the largest sense, [are] Growth
with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost
implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect
and direct action of the external conditions of life, and
from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to
lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to
Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character
and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from
the war of nature, from famine and death, the most
exalted object which we are capable of conceiving,
namely the production of the higher animals, directly
follows.
Charles Darwin
12. “There is grandeur in the view of life…
having been originally breathed by the
Creator into a few forms or into one;
and that, whilst this planet has gone
cycling on according to the fixed law of
gravity, from so simple a beginning
endless forms most beautiful and most
wonderful have been, and are being,
evolved.”
Charles Darwin
13. ❖He concluded in another work, The Descent of
Man (1871):
“We must…acknowledge, as it seems to me, that
man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy
which feels for the most debased, with benevolence
which extends not only to other men but to the
humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect
which has penetrated into the movements and
constitutions of the solar system-with all these
exalted powers-Man still bears in his bodily frame
the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.”
Charles Darwin
14. ❖Thomas Malthus wrote Essay on
Population in 1798.
❖He asserted that nature was not
benign and that progress was not
inevitable.
❖Increase in population would
always outrun people’s limited
resources.
Social Darwinism
15.
16. Social Darwinism
❖Food supply increased
arithmetically (1, 2, 3, 4…), while
population increased geometrically
(1, 2, 4, 8…).
❖The consequence of this “law” of
population growth was that suffering
would increase despite social
improvements.
17. Religious Thought
❖Religious beliefs and institutions were
still very strong in the mid-nineteenth
century.
❖New type of biblical study raised
disturbing issues.
❖Study of ancient languages grew more
sophisticated with development of
philology, analysis of texts and languages.
18. ❖Texts could be more clearly
understood in original context.
❖Some scholars concluded that
the Bible was written by several
people at different times.
❖Challenged the belief that the
Bible was revealed truth.
Religious Thought
19. ❖If Darwin was right, life was a process
of constant change and not an act of
special creation; species emerged and
were destroyed in random fashion, God
did not seem to care.
❖Darwin’s universe was always in flux.
❖If one accepted Darwin’s vision,
questions like What should the goals of
life be?
Religious Thought
20. ❖How should people behave? What was
their relationship to God? What of the idea
of the soul?
❖Many regarded biblical criticism as
heresy and Darwin as inspired by the devil.
❖“Warfare between science and theology,”
was not universal.
❖Some felt that evolution could be part of
God’s plan.
Religious Thought
21. ❖Thomas Henry Huxley
(1825-1895) created the term
“agnostic” which maintained
that ultimate truths about nature
and God were not knowable;
therefore one should not waste
time arguing about these things.
Religious Thought
22. Psychology
❖Modern psychology developed by
Austrian doctor Sigmund Freud
(1856-1939).
❖Investigated the workings of the
individual mind.
❖Began in medicine, but realized
some of his patients’ symptoms were
not the result of physical ailments.
24. ❖In order to treat this symptoms he
developed method of psychoanalysis,
by which mental history of each
patient was carefully analyzed.
❖Freud rejected the view that people
are basically rational creatures.
❖Developed complex theory of
behaviour.
Psychology
25. ❖Freud first made a distinction between
the conscious and unconscious.
❖Theorized that there were at least two
levels of mind in operation, with the
unconscious often playing a primary role,
as in the case of hysterical patients.
❖Stressed the importance of childhood
experiences in influencing actions of
mature persons.
Psychology
26. ❖Recognized the significance of dreams and
published The Interpretation of Dreams
(1900).
❖Thought that dreams are the way people act
out events and desires that cannot be fulfilled
in society.
❖Freud claimed that people had certain
instincts, such as sexual desires and
aggressions, which have to be repressed in
civilized world.
Psychology
27. ❖These instincts, sometimes referred to as the
“libido,” were included in part of a person’s
personality, which Freud called the “id,” one’s
basic desires.
❖The id is held in check by the “super-ego,” which
is the conscience acquire by people living in society.
❖The face one presents to the world is the “ego” –
personality or self, which is constantly caught
between the desires of the id and the repression of
the superego.
Psychology
29. ❖When tensions between the id and
superego become unbearable, an
individual may cease to be able to function
effectively.
❖Challenged Enlightenment view that
people were guided by reason.
❖Saw behaviour as complex, not to be
explained simply in terms of economic
gain or social satisfaction.
Psychology
30. Physical Universe
❖Albert Einstein (1879-1955).
❖“Special theory of relativity” (1905).
❖Claimed that the observer was extremely
important in describing the movement of bodies
in space.
❖Used trains as an example: an observer who is
standing in a meadow sees a train from a very
different position from that of an observer who
is looking at it while travelling on another train.
32. ❖The observer in the meadow and the observer
on the other train will measure the speed
differently.
❖Einstein defined space relativity, not
absolutely.
❖There can be no accuracy in describing where
a planet is in space without stating where the
observer who is doing the measuring is standing.
❖Mars looks different to a person on Earth than
it would to a person on the moon.
Physical Universe
33. ❖Space is “relative,” meaning that it can only be
defined as the relation between things in an
otherwise empty universe.
❖Also redefined time, speaking of it as an order of
events related to the observer.
❖The reason we can talk to one another about time
is that we agree on a similar reference system: the
year 1905 means something to us because we have
defined what a “year” is and “1905” is one thousand
and nine hundred and five “years” after something
else happened.
Physical Universe
34. ❖Time is not objective, but subjective.
❖Our clock is related to our position in
space in relation to the sun and the
rotation of the Earth around its axis.
❖A “year,” the amount of time taken by
the Earth to rotate around the sun, would
be different for someone on another
heavenly body with a different rotation.
Physical Universe
35. Karl Marx
❖Most popular work was the Manifesto
of the Communist Party, written in
collaboration with Friedrich Engels.
❖Declared that modern history could be
understood in terms of “the class
struggle.”
❖Social change could take place only by
revolution, which the oppressed class
overthrew the oppressors.
37. ❖Marx argued that the most important
factors that conditioned a person’s ideas and
beliefs were social environment and
individual’s relationship to the economy.
❖French Revolution was not the end product
of the ideology of the Enlightenment.
❖Rather, occurred in 1789 because social
and economic conditions were ripe for
revolution.
Karl Marx
38. ❖He believed that through the study
of history one could discover laws of
social change.
❖Identified four types of societies that
had appeared in the West – primitive,
ancient, feudal, and capitalist.
❖Societies were distinguished by the
way they produced goods.
Karl Marx
39. ❖Each became transformed as
economic conditions changed.
❖Feudal society became bourgeois
(middle class) when industrial
production became more important
than agriculture.
❖Owners of industry – the bourgeoisie
– replaced the owners of land – the
aristocracy – as the dominant class.
Karl Marx
40. ❖The “exploitation” of the proletariat
(industrial labourer who owned no capital
or property) replaced that of the serfs.
❖Marx believed that economic change
occurs with the development of technology.
❖Social change is produced by class
conflict between those who control the
means of production and those who do not.
Karl Marx
41. ❖The French Revolution was the “bourgeois”
revolution, because it resulted in the victory
of the middle class over the aristocracy.
❖Marx predicted that after the proletariat
overthrew their masters a transition period
would ensue.
❖This would be followed by communism, no
exploitation because means of production
would be owned by society.
Karl Marx
42. ❖Communist society with only one class –
the workers – there would be no conflict
because there would be no individual owners
of the means of production.
❖Predicted that England and Germany
would lead in the development of world
socialism – political and economic system in
which means of production and distribution
are owned, managed, or controlled by central
democratically elected authority.
Karl Marx
43. ❖Communist society with only one class – the
workers – there would be no conflict because
there would be no individual owners of the
means of production.
❖Predicted that England and Germany would
lead in the development of world socialism –
political and economic system in which means
of production and distribution are owned,
managed, or controlled by central
democratically elected authority.
Karl Marx
