A new book about Herbert Spencer apparently argues against the conventional wisdom that he preached “social Darwinism.” I think that’s right, and the association has lasted as long as it has just because it was useful to have an identifiable foil. I remember taking an intro-level ethics class in college where Spencer’s social Darwinist views were “explained,” and thinking that this didn’t comport with the (admittedly limited) Spencer I’d read. So I went home and skimmed through The Principles of Ethics, and the next class came in with a few notes I’d jotted down and suggested that he was actually making a rather different argument: That attitudes and institutions are also subject to a kind of evolutionary selection pressure, that generous social programs would cultivate an ethic of dependency, and that this would in turn create a feedback loop, as the growing constituency for those programs created pressure for their expansion. One might disagree with that argument (I said), but it was hardly some crude doctrine of eliminating the genetically unfit. The instructor looked surprised or a moment—few people bother to read Spencer these days, and I’m guessing he hadn’t either—and then smoothly continued: “Well, then it’s useful to imagine someone making this argument, call him Spencer-star…”

In slightly related news, a new book by economic historian Gregory Clark apparently does make an argument that sounds like social Darwinism, attributing the industrial revolution to some kind of genetic change spurred by the reproductive success of the bourgeoisie. This strikes me as highly implausible, but I think one of the roomies has a copy around the house, so perhaps I’ll have a look.

Update: Roomie and Reasonite extraordinaire Kerry Howley says this is a misreading: Clark, too, is talking about cultural transmission.