Society's Impact on Darwin

Society's Impact on Darwin

There aren't many who would doubt that Charles Darwin was a genius, a pioneering ground-breaker in the world of science. Many of his ideas and thoughts have been validated by science since their initial proposals and continue to be taught in classrooms today. However, despite Darwin's enormous contributions to the body of scientific knowledge it cannot be overlooked that he was still a man vulnerable to biased notions and ideas of his society, as most people likely were and still are. He was still influenced by the culture in which he had lived and grown accustomed to. With this in mind it becomes easier to understand how he could make a statement such as "man is superior to woman". There are people to this day who still believe ideas like these despite the fact that women when given the chance by society always seem to prove themselves to be competent. Despite the presence of professional, self-supportive women in society there still remain some who believe they should be subservient to and dependent on males. Darwin, however, wasn't privileged to live in a society such as modern America or England in which women have more freedom and depend more upon themselves. Because he lived in such a sexist society it is not at all hard to see how his ideas on evolution were most likely influenced by his surroundings.

In Darwin's time his society did not promote equality of males and females. Women were commonly brushed aside and kept to the household. Their main occupations in life were often thought to be maintaining and cleaning the home and providing support for their husband. Job opportunities, at least well paying and/or prestigious ones were few and far between for them. Likewise they were also frequently excluded from expressing their opinions on politics and business affairs. Of course, as with almost anything in life, there were no doubt a few outliers, a few women who pushed the boundaries and crossed the barriers that society had set before them. However, as a whole they were an oppressed, and thus seemingly inferior, human when compared with men. Of great interest is the fact that some scientists of that time went so far as to classify men and women into two distinct psychological species due to perceived differences in intelligence. Males were homo frontalis while females were classified as homo parietalis (rae.org). Of course Darwin himself shared a similar opinion on this same subject. According to Darwin in his book The Descent of Man the chief distinction in the intellectual powers of the two sexes is shown by man's attaining to a higher eminence in whatever he takes up then can woman - whether requiring deep thought, reason, or imagination, or merely the use of the senses and hands (Darwin 1013). Darwin of course was in large part drawing upon his observations of Western European society and its definitions of intelligence. In a sense he was merely a product of his generation when it came to opinions of the differences between men and women. He had been conditioned by his environment to think and feel certain ways regarding male and female human beings.

The following quote is another one of great interest also found in The Descent of Man: "It is generally admitted that with women the powers of intuition, of rapid perception, and perhaps of imitation, are more strongly marked than in man; but some, at least, of these faculties are characteristic of the lower races, and therefore of a past and lower state of civilisation" (Darwin 1012). What is important to note here is the fact that Darwin parallels the characteristic behaviors of women with those of the "lower races". This indicates that he had fallen into the trap of believing that his ideas of progress were somehow indicative of being more highly evolved. He considered the "lower races" of people to be representative of past and lower states of civilization. Of course it is also important to remember that Darwin didn't have our current fields of anthropology and sociology at his use to examine studies and ethnographic accounts of these "lower civilizations". Further, it isn't likely that many in his era understood how complex and highly advanced the political systems were of people such as the 16th century Incans of Peru. To him and many of his fellow Europeans it was societies such as theirs that represented the pinnacle of human evolution.

One of the major flaws Darwin's opinion of human nature had was that it relied too much on biology alone. He had observed countless numbers of organisms, studied fossils of them, and recorded great amounts of data about them, much of this done on his voyage aboard the H.M.S. Beagle. From all of the information he gathered regarding various forms of life he put together his theory of evolution by means of natural selection. It was only logical that he would apply those same theories and ideas to human beings since we ourselves are also animals. However, what he didn't take into enough consideration was the culture variable, the fact that culture as we know it is unique to human beings and plays an enormous role in determining how we think and behave. His mistake was that he gave biology too much credit, and culture and society not enough, for current human behavior patterns. Likewise, there were other people at the time, and there undoubtedly are still a few to this day, who took Darwin's initial proposals and beliefs and ran with them. People such as Francis Galton, a cousin to Darwin, came to promote the