The Progress of Society: An Inquiry into an 'Old-Fashioned' Thesis of Walter Bagehot
British Journal for the History of Philosophy 19 (3):519 - 541 (2011)
| Abstract | The nineteenth century saw the rise of Darwinism as a new paradigm for the study of nature and man mans an integral part thereof. Many scholars were intent on removing the abstract principles and universal truths of early modern philosophy in favour of understanding man's nature through more scientifically-based methods. Walter Bagehot (1826?1877) was one of the leading exponents of this view. Our focus is on one of Bagehot's famous books, Physics and Politics, or thoughts on the application of the principles of `natural selection' and `inheritance' to political society. Physics and Politics can be seen as one of the most remarkable attempts to think the intertwining of politics and Darwinism. In our paper, we want to examine Bagehot's efforts to apply natural sciences to politics and philosophy and his focus on progress and the idea that such progress is inherited over generations. We want to examine in what way a Darwinian framework of thinking is actually used in Physics and Politics. Our conclusion is that perhaps Physics and Politics established a framework for the application of biological principles to political society, but it definitely did not do so for the application of Darwin's principle of natural selection | |||||||||
| Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,679 |
| External links |
 |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesWalter Bagehot (1872/1973). Physics and Politics. Westport, Conn.,Greenwood Press.
Walter Bagehot (1867). The English Constitution. Chapman & Hall/Cambridge University Press.
Michel S. Zouboulakis (1999). Walter Bagehot on Economic Methodology: Evolutionism and Realisticnessl. Journal of Economic Methodology 6 (1):79-94.
Steindór J. Erlingsson (2002). From Haeckelian Monist to Anti-Haeckelian Vitalist: The Transformation of the Icelandic Naturalist Thorvaldur Thoroddsen (1855-1921). [REVIEW] Journal of the History of Biology 35 (3):443 - 470.
Gregory Radick (2000). Two Explanations of Evolutionary Progress. Biology and Philosophy 15 (4).
Matthew David & Iain Wilkinson (2002). Critical Theory of Society or Self-Critical Society? Critical Horizons 3 (1):131-158.
Vitaly G. Gorokhov (2008). A New Understanding of the Technological Progress in the Modern Philosophy of Technology. Proceedings of the Xxii World Congress of Philosophy 48:25-31.
Timothy Shanahan (2004). The Evolution of Darwinism: Selection, Adaptation, and Progress in Evolutionary Biology. Cambridge University Press.
Yoram Levy (2005). The Situational Context on the Nature of Political Philosophy. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 8 (5):535 - 556.
Clinton Golding (2012). Epistemic Progress: A Construct for Understanding and Evaluating Inquiry. Educational Theory 62 (6):677-693.
Lawrence Eliot Klein (1994). Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness: Moral Discourse and Cultural Politics in Early Eighteenth-Century England. Cambridge University Press.
Gertrude Himmelfarb (2006). The Moral Imagination: From Edmund Burke to Lionel Trilling. Ivan R. Dee.
Clara Fischer, Progressive Cannibalism: Progress, Democracy and Ethics. Available Online for Conference 'Ethics in Public Life'.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2011-05-26Total downloads5 ( #160,368 of 549,084 )Recent downloads (6 months)0How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
