Talk:Social Darwinism

message: Computing and commuting and missed the edit summary: sorry. RV "socialism" as having the wrong-in fact nearly the opposite-meaning.--Old Moonraker (talk) 15:04, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the links which look useful. As usual, "Darwinism" is misleading as it's a pejorative term for concepts that Darwin himself did not espouse or endorse. Planned state control of human breeding was taken up enthusiastically by people in several states of the U.S., and laws were passed accordingly, it's an interesting question as to whether these American Mendelian eugenicists were proponents of laissez-faire but clearly misleading to call them Darwinists. Not that we can expect them to have been consistent in their endorsements. . . dave souza, talk 10:53, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text:  I agree very much with Trueliberal. None of the included ideologies: eugenics, racism, imperialism, fascism, or Nazism are "Darwinist" in either a technical or popular sense. Even "Collective Darwinism" and "Reform Darwinism" are not even remotely descriptive of Darwinism in any but ironic sense, in that Darwin's theory was of NATURAL selection, not artificial selectivity.-- Jane Q. Public (talk) 09:02, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Government intervention" 

message: The Idiot's Guide to world history was written by a high school teacher without a PhD (says Amazon.com) and does not meet minimal standards in WP:RS (rule is "we only publish the opinions of reliable authors") -- please use some  of the powerful books that are listed in the article. Rjensen (talk) 18:53, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Idiot's Guide

message: The opening paragraph seems quite confusing, especially the first sentence.  It seems to me that it should begin with a simple definition.  Something like:  Social Darwinism is a belief, popular in the late Victorian era in England, America, and elsewhere, which states that the strongest or fittest should survive and flourish in society, while the weak and unfit should be allowed to die. 
As it is currently worded it almost sounds like the opposite is true.  "Coined by those opposed to survival of the fittest" - ??  I get what you're going for, but that shouldn't be in the opening paragraph.Jasonnewyork (talk) 15:54, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree completely. Buss is neither a neutral observer or a specialist in social darwinism - quite the contrary in fact.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 00:31, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

text: And I have removed it again - it doesn't need to specific in the lead but can be explained in detail below. Specifically you can't insert it into a sentence that is supported by a source that doesn't mention that particular issue. The source in fact states that even before WWII the term was generally pejorative, so you make it contradict itself when inserting it like that. Furthermore the Nazi atrocities are already mentioned in the first paragraph.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 16:28, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: That is a valid interpretation - but it ignores the fact that (negative) eugenics have generally been considered to be the active form of selection - a kind of "speeding up nature", in a similar way to how "breeding/artificial selection" is an active human directed kind of natural selection. Spencer did not believe that active efforts were required - he thought the cream would rise to the top automatically (or that it already had - explaining his own privileged position). Darwin's cousin Galton thought nature might need a little push so that we wouldn't have to wait so long for the plebes to die off by themselves. The Nazi Eugenics (an other programmes in the US and Europe) program drew on Galton. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 00:04, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmm. From our Francis Galton article, he believed that a scheme of 'marks' for family merit should be defined, and early marriage between families of high rank be encouraged by provision of monetary incentives. He pointed out some of the tendencies in British society, such as the late marriages of eminent people, and the paucity of their children, which he thought were dysgenic. He advocated encouraging eugenic marriages by supplying able couples with incentives to have children. Doesn't sound much like Nazi eugenics which were based on Eugenics in the United States, and so were racist rather than class based. No evidence the Nazis drew on Galton. . dave souza, talk 10:00, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Opening paragraph 

message: Just reading the last sentence in the introduction, I think that's poorly written. My understanding is:
 - one *can* start with darwins theory and apply it to society to arrive at social darwinism, in a strictly technical, amoral context, but
 - one *does not necessarily* have to arrive at social darwinism from this starting point (per the first reference), and quite distinctly:
 - if one introduces the entire dimension of morality, then one cannot use darwinism as a moral justification for the consequences of social darwinism (hence the invocation of the naturalistic fallacy).
The problem is, a cursory reading of that might easily go like:
- scholars have said that social darwinism doesn't follow from darwin's theory, and
- using darwin's theory to arrive at social darwinism is a naturalistic fallacy, and
- (following the link to naturalistic fallacy) this is probably a 'formal fallacy', 
ergo, the link between social darwinism and darwin's theory has been formally shown to be false.
Now, that's a completely incorrect statement, but it's a bit too easy to misapprehend (I know, because that's exactly how I just read it, until I did a double take and read around it a bit). I think this needs to be much more clearly worded, either to make it clear that the reference to 'naturalistic fallacy' is only applicable if you introduce a 'moral' dimension to the equation, which is quite aside from a logical progression or commonality between the two concepts, or else and maybe better just to remove the reference to avoid muddying the waters for the casual reader.
thoughts?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.176.223.225 (talk) 21:55, 30 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Referenc to 'naturalistic fallacy' is misleading 

message: The second paragraph is vague and misleading viz. -
In sociology it has been defined as a theory of social evolution which asserts that "There are underlying, and largely irresistible, forces acting in societies which are like the natural forces that operate in animal and plant communities. One can therefore formulate social laws similar to natural ones. These social forces are of such a kind as to produce evolutionary progress through the natural conflicts between social groups. The best-adapted and most successful social groups survive these conflicts, raising the evolutionary level of society generally (the 'survival of the fittest')."[5] 
What is the "the evolutionary level of society" and can it be "raised"?
--Craigmac41 (talk) 21:06, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vague terminology 

message: Under the heading "Germany" this sentence appears:
Social evolution theories in Germany gained large popularity in the 1860s and had a strong antiestablishment connotation first.
I was going to clean this up to remove the trailing "first". But then realised I didn't know what exactly the author meant. Was it: "In the first place..." (i.e. "initially")? Or was it: "Firstly..." (i.e. "mainly")? 194.75.11.41 (talk) 16:17, 23 April 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  More vagueness? 

message: The following sentence of Darwin in the article requires explanation, for the article to explain social darwinism, rather than promote it.
"Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature"
Here Darwin commits the essential social darwinist error to make matters of good and bad, into matters of fact. A measurable good (noble) nature, and a measurable bad nature. 
Darwin does not subjectively acknowlege any spiritual domain, therefore he is forced to make all issues of the worth of people into issues of measurable facts. Darwin wrote a book about emotions in which he objectifies all emotions, discounting the idea that love and hate are only subjectively identified, and not measurable. Morality is derived from what is found to be hateful and loving, therefore for Darwin to identify love and hate as matters of fact, intstead of leaving them a matter of subjective opinion, is already committing the naturalistic fallacy. --Syamsu (talk) 19:20, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: You seem to be committing the antisocial Darwinist error of soapboxing rather than providing reliable sources showing significant views on the topic. . dave souza, talk 20:36, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

text: p.s. Darwin's theory opposed racism: i.e. "after starting Darwin’s Sacred Cause about two years ago, we clinched the 'common descent' angle and pieced together how Darwin's research for the book that became The Origin of Species effectively combated the rising `scientific racism’ in America and Britain." There are nuances, but that's a significant scholarly view. . . dave souza, talk 21:08, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text:  To make value judgements of people in accordance with material characteristics, and then derived from natural selection theory. I believe Gould said this was the main point of social darwinism, and that this was wrong, the naturalistic fallacy. Darwin commits this naturalistic fallacy, right here in the social darwinism section, you do also commit that fallacy I gather. I shudder to think what will happen to the people you pseudoscientifically see as being hateful. You cannot possibly let this quote of Darwin stand there to increase social darwinism through wiki. --Syamsu (talk) 00:26, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: You seem to not understand what Darwin is saying in that quote - he is saying that humans should always help each other, because if we don't we will no longer be the kinds of humans we ought to. He is making the opposite argument of social Darwinism in this quote. He does espouse viewpoints similar to Social Darwinism in some of his other works, but not in this quote. He also makes statements that we would think of as racist, but pretty much everyone did back then, and he was a lot less viciously racist than many other people writing at the time. There is nothing inherently racist or social Darwinist in Darwin's evolutionary theorty, and both racism and social Darwinism (not so named of course) existed before Darwin. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 01:01, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text:  I know many modern social darwinists make the same kind of argument that Darwinism promotes cooperation. But the virulence is in making it a scientifically certain fact what love and hate consists of. When I normally say "you are a loving person", then I do that based on my self-confidence trusting my subjective opinion. When I say "it is a matter of scientific fact that you are a loving person", then that basically destroys my own subjective opinion, and replaces it with a scientific calculation, it destroys my character. So you see even scientific judgement about being loving are extremely destructive, let alone scientific pronouncements of hatefulness. Think this through carefully step by step, Darwin commits the naturalistic fallacy himself.--Syamsu (talk) 01:16, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that Darwin commits the naturalistic fallacy frequently (in Descent of Man) - but doing that is not the same as promoting social Darwinism (which is a set of ideas about how to structure a society based on evolutionary calculus). The problem you describe is more a problem inherent in the idea of objective science itself.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 02:53, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Darwin's theory is racist 

message: I added that Obama used this term to criticize Republicans and it was deleted as "not relevant". On what planet is the use of mostly forgotten 100-year-old term by a head of state not relevant? Obama's use of the term has generated a ton of press and brought this idea into the public eye in a way it hasn't been for a long time. To say that's not relevant is inherently ludicrous. D O N D E groovily Talk to me 19:29, 6 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Its recentism and has no impact or relvance for the general concept that a politician uses it as a pejorative. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 19:34, 6 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think one mention qualifies as a resurgence.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 19:46, 6 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Obama and social darwinism 

message: Coatracking citations together isn't an indication of a view being weighty or demonstrative in a field.  In this case the individual creationist critiques are primary sources, and it is important to find the secondary source that notes that they are significant.  Fifelfoo (talk) 04:30, 22 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  WEIGHT 

message: In the second paragraph, the last phrase, that leads to the 3rd reference in this time, says "because of the negative connotations of the theory of social Darwinism" and ends with "and the term is generally seen as pejorative". In the same sentence, the same idea is presented, so I think we could suppress one of these terms. I would rather take out the last one, "and the term is generally seen as pejorative", because it is only repeating what was already exposed.
The text shall gain a little more coherence with this alteration.
--Igor Dalmy (talk) 14:21, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Social Darwinism as pejorative term 

message: The section on Carnegie is highly misleading. Yes, he was a philanthropist, but he was against almsgiving and raising wages for workers because of his social Darwinist ideas.  Read the Gospel of Wealth.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.109.220.2 (talk) 21:06, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Carnegie 

message: Unsurprisingly, Weikart gives a favourable review to Social Darwinism in European and American Thought 1860-1945 by Mike Hawkins. Bearing in mind that there are competing definitions, Weikart summarises it thus;  "He defines Social Darwinism as a world view containing the following five beliefs: 1) biological laws govern all of nature, including humans, 2) Malthusian population pressure produces a struggle for existence, 3) physical and mental traits providing an advantage to individuals or species would spread, 4) selection and inheritance would produce new species and eliminate others, and 5) natural laws (including the four above) extend to human social existence, including morality and religion. Those embracing these fundamental points are Social Darwinists, whether they are militarists or pacifists, laissez-faire proponents or socialists."There are obvious inaccuracies in this as science, not least the misinterpretation of scientific laws and the idea that selection and inheritance are producing new species of humans, directly contrary to Darwin's work. Is it worth summarising it as one view? . . dave souza, talk 07:31, 3 July 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: p.s. according to our article, "It attempts to give a firm definition to what Darwinism was and is." Can someone find that definition? Darwinism has of course meant several very different things at different times and in different contexts. . . dave souza, talk 07:57, 3 July 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: A definition

message: Shouldn't communism and Marxist socialism ideology also included? Although in theory communism is opposes social darwinism as makes the assumption that individuals will work towards a common good at the expense of individual benefit. In reality this shift means that "Darwinian collectivism" takes place to stratify population. 
85.115.110.103 (talk) 19:35, 11 August 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Communism/socialism 

message: Robert C. Williams, in The Historian's Toolbox: A Student's Guide to the Theory and Craft of History, 3rd Ed. (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2012), p. 57, quotes Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman, Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They say It? (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000) as they discuss the Wansee Protocol:
:Eichmann explains that a natural selection (naturliche Auslese) in the Darwinian sense will make these Jews the most resistant (to death by exhaustion), meaning they will be the fittest--the youngest, healthiest, smartest, etc. Should this population of naturally selected Jews survive, they might (Eichmann fears) "become the germ-cell of a new Jewish revival." History, Eichmann points out, supports this theory of social Darwinism.
Seems there should be some mention of this in section 8.3.Yopienso (talk) 22:36, 28 September 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Adolf Eichmann on social Darwinism 

message: Reference to Hobbes' views is incorrect, for he believed in Stoicism as much as Darwin or "the judicious Hooker" and clearly felt mankind should come together to survive.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.241.26.8 (talk) 13:48, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hobbes 

message: The article has creationism prominently in the lede, but doesn't deal with it in the further text. I would prefer to have a separate section in the text or erase it completely. The role of Haeckel is not being described properly - he was crucial in propagating Darwin's biological evolution in Germany, but added a specific racist and as well neoreligeous flavor (the monism movement) to it. We doi not have to care what biologists believe evolution should mean, we need e.g. historians and sociologists explaining the impact on such interpretations on society. For theology, Friedrich Wilhelm Graf's 2011 lecture at the Bavarian academy of science: Kreationismus. Sechs Kapitel aus der Religionsgeschichte der Moderne (Creationism, six chapters from modern history of religion) provides some hints as well. Polentarion Talk 09:44, 6 September 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Social darwinism and creationism 

message: Why is this part of a series on discrimination? Social darwinism is as anti-discriminatory as can be, judging only based on your own ability.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Leon1122334455 (talk • contribs) 22:06, 29 October 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Discrimination Portal 

message: For proof, look at Google's Ngram Viewer:
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Social+Darwinism&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2CSocial%20Darwinism%3B%2Cc0
This is a chart of occurrences of the term in print in all of the printed works in Google's database; the graph shows the relative frequency of the term in print since the year 1800. As you can see, the term was almost unused before around 1920, dipped in the 1930's, then rose steadily from about 1940 to the 1980's. In short, no one in the 19th century used the term "social darwinism". It is primarily a 20th century term, applied to ideological and economic ideas that the left wants to denigrate. --RJBowman (talk) 01:57, 21 April 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: It seems to me that SD is a term akin to "trickle down economics", a derogatory term coined by detractors of an economic view. It's even anachronic, AFAIK, with Darwinism itself being posterior and having been perhaps more influenced by it than vice-versa. It would be interesting to have direct quotations of the "main supporters" of SD making their points, supporting the claim they applied darwinism, or proto-darwinism to society/economics, rather than not having nature as a source or analogy. In some instances the article seems to loosely conflate more general ideas of social evolution (such as those addressed by socialists, mentioned as the first historical instances, drawing conclusions that are the opposite of social darwinism -- Stanford's Encyclopedia o Philosophy even calls it "socialist darwinism"), as well as human biological evolution and genetics (or eugenics, its "application"), with SD, when SD does not necessarily entails eugenics, being a more strictly economic thing.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 45.234.133.71 (talk) 05:29, 14 June 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Term Social Darwinism Nearly Non-Existent in 19th century 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: The article seems to have got itself lost in the fine arguments of who said what and when and what did they mean? That problem is difficult enough to solve but it seems to miss the point. 
The problem is not what Social Darwinism means to philosophers but what it has come to mean in society. As a phrase it is important because it approximately describes the position taken by certain segments of society who promote, chiefly among themselves, the idea that the rich are society's fittest and it is their destiny to help gradually eliminate the drag on 'progress' created by the poor. They further often attach the word 'Darwinism' or the phrase 'natural selection' to this, not because they have carefully examined that link, but because they simply wish their actions to be justified as science.
Someone pointed this out above (referring to Obama's use of the term) and was roundly criticized. But it is precisely this current colloquial usage of this term that is important, not all the philosophical background.
The term "Social Darwinism" is seldom used by such the powerful either because they have never heard of this term, but do believe, through their crude understanding of Darwinism, that their beliefs are supported by science. The more sophisticated (but not necessarily more exact in their reasoning) know that it is associated with Hitler's eugenics and while they may quietly hold similar views would never admit to it because of the optics.
The point here is that these individual abuse logic and science to justify their ruthless promotion of political and social goals that unjustifiably strengthen their own position, and disempower the already disadvantaged. Note that my opposition, and likely the opposition of those who use the term 'Social Darwinism' derogatively, is not the indignation of someone simply opposed to 'social injustice'; it is the crude hijacking of 'science' to justify those ends. The same people use similar arguments to justify religious beliefs that are a similar self-serving distortion of actual religious teachings. 
An article like this, that woffles on and on about what the philosophers said is absolutely necessary...in a philosophical journal, but completely misses the point in an encyclopedia article.
--50.64.40.229 (talk) 02:20, 9 December 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Can't we make this simpler...and clearer? 

message: Why is this in that category? Did it turn into science? Does someone expect it to do that soon? --Hob Gadling (talk) 20:09, 9 April 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Good questions. Looks like it has since been removed from this category. Generalrelative (talk) 16:38, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[:Category:Protoscience]] 

message: I'm planning to do some work on this article. The lede is loaded with WP:UNDUE truthy claims about morality. In no particular order, these are what I think the biggest problems to address right now are:  
* Egregious amounts of WP:WEASEL. Social Darwinism is an ideology, not a science. It's much less interested in what is than what ought. The things that it usually claims ought are often absolutely apalling, but I think it is extremely misleading to repeatedly make wildly WP:UNDUE claims about "truth" when social darwinism doesn't generally argue much in the way of fact. I'm planning to remove or better source the vast majority of claims made about what is true, and be much more specific about what it means to be true. We can explain all the reasons that it isn't popular without making unencyclopedic and misleading claims of fact.
* Organisation problems. The article structure right now is incredibly cluttered with tons of different sections and implementations. I want to hammer these out.  
* Poor clarity on scientific claims. If we are to declare that scientists agree social darwinism is false, we should be specific about which specific positive claims are false. At the moment, it's rather confusing to have a lede that talks about *motive*, and then promptly claims the motive is not factual. It's unclear what this means.
BrigadierG (talk) 04:27, 26 January 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: This sounds like a good plan. I will say though that the basic pseudoscientific claim of social Darwinism is pretty straightforward: that society (or the species or the "race" or whatever) will inevitably degrade in the absence of survival-of-the-fittest style social policies. If you have any trouble locating reliable secondary sources that say exactly this, I'll be happy to help. Generalrelative (talk) 04:53, 26 January 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: As I stated before, the above sounds like a good plan. However, in practice, the edits that you put into place  do not appear to accord with policies and guidelines, notably WP:NPOV and WP:FRINGE. Instead, you appear to be attempting to rehabilitate Social Darwinism, a worldview which is rightly considered by mainstream sources to reside on the trash-heap of pseudoscientific embarrassments. I am highly dubious that you will succeed in establishing consensus for such changes, but you are welcome to try. Generalrelative (talk) 00:41, 12 March 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd appreciate more than a WP:VAGUEWAVE on exactly how you think I've violated WP:NPOV or WP:FRINGE. The scientific claims of social darwinism are bunk, but it's not coherent to call a moral theory pseudoscientific. On that basis I think it's worth separating the two. We had a similar problem on the Metaverse article where mixed references to fictional and real-world implementations of metaverses led to poor article clarity. I think there needs to be clarification about this. I'm not a proponent of social darwinism and I'm not here to try and backdoor it into acceptability. BrigadierG (talk) 00:49, 12 March 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm afraid all you get is a vague hand-wave when you ask a vague question. I've explained to you in a general way why I see your edits as contrary to policy and guidelines. And indeed, I explained to you in my initial comment what I take to be the basic pseudoscientific claim of social Darwinism. Feel free to bring up specific changes for discussion if you'd like. Generalrelative (talk) 02:09, 12 March 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: And as I've stated for now the third time, the problem is that calling a moral theory pseudoscientific doesn't make any sense. Just because you think social darwinism belongs on the trash heap isn't a justification for keeping unsourced claims about the truthiness of a moral theory. I don't think I'm being vague at all here, I would really appreciate an explanation of this in particular. BrigadierG (talk) 05:45, 12 March 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, I suppose the main hitch is that you haven’t persuaded me of your premise, that social Darwinism is a moral theory and not a worldview, or that the two need to be kept strictly separate in the article. You seem to be very confident of this premise, so it ought to be easy for you to provide reliable, mainstream sources saying precisely that. I'll be happy to consider them. Perhaps then we can discuss what you mean by  about . Generalrelative (talk) 07:53, 12 March 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: p.23 of Social Darwinism in European and American Thought, 1860-1945 by Mike Hawkins is a good start. It's not that social Darwinism is not a worldview, it is that it is separately a worldview and a moral theory. In pretty much every book I could find on the subject, the contents page divides the political and ethical ramifications. BrigadierG (talk) 22:17, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: I applaud the attempt. However the source doesn't quite say that, does it? Rather, it says:  The distinction is thus methodological rather than ontological, which is quite different from your claim that social Darwinism "is separately a worldview and a moral theory". Indeed, on p. 21, the author makes clear that his methodological distinction between world view and ideology does not map precisely onto the traditional distinction between the empirical and the normative:  So if your broader argument is that social Darwinism cannot be pseudoscientific because it is a moral theory and moral theories do not make empirical claims, this is not the source you're looking for.  And even if this book did say precisely what you’d like it to say, it would still be a WP:PRIMARY intervention in the scholarly literature, rather than a WP:SECONDARY or WP:TERTIARY review of what mainstream scholars think. Only the latter two can serve to establish the overall tone and balance of our treatment of the topic. And since numerous such sources do describe social Darwinism as "discredited"  or "pseudoscientific"  (just a sample of what’s out there, in addition to the four sources currently cited where we use the term in the article), there would be a high burden of proof you’d need to meet in order to show that these sources do not in fact represent the scholarly mainstream. Generalrelative (talk) 00:46, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Major problems - this article seems to egregiously fail WP:NPOV 

message: How should we address the difference between the moral theory of social darwinism (that the weak deserve to be weakened further) and its extremely dubious scientific claims (racial intelligence, social collapse, etc)? Requesting comment on this to help drive consensus. BrigadierG (talk) 01:07, 12 March 2022 (UTC)
thread_title: RfC

message: As it is, it mixes people criticising "social darwinism" itself and people criticising "social darwinism" as a useful concept together. Eldomtom2 (talk) 22:04, 6 May 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Criticism and controversy" section needs to be split 

message: If you asked Enver Pasha that "are you a social darwinist?", he would first hesitate and then answer "no I am muslim of Hanafi-Maturidi school, Alhamdulillah".
Please don't do that. You seem ridiculous. 188.119.60.2 (talk) 00:48, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  The CUP joke 

message: IP 79.31.103.194 is invited to discuss their preferred wording here rather than edit warring. Generalrelative (talk) 23:24, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Contested edit 

message: The article generally presents social darwinism as a concept that is uncontroversially accepted as having existed by historians. This is not the case. The "Criticism of Social Darwinism as a category" section should be greatly expanded. Eldomtom2 (talk) 19:45, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lacking information on debate over whether or not "social darwinism" was actually a thing that existed, and if so what it was 

message: Can anybody check what those papers actually say? I cannot access them, and the sentence seems suspicious. Why call biologists "biological scientists", for instance? Who are they? --Hob Gadling (talk) 13:58, 14 May 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Turns out there was no there there. "References" simply redirected to Scopus homepage. Generalrelative (talk) 03:52, 17 May 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Biological scientists"