USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -Social Darwinists believe in “survival of the fittest”-the idea that certain people become powerful in society because they are innately better. Social Darwinism has been used to justify imperialism, racism, eugenics and social inequality at various times over the past century and a half.

Detailed explanation-2: -survival of the fittest, term made famous in the fifth edition (published in 1869) of On the Origin of Species by British naturalist Charles Darwin, which suggested that organisms best adjusted to their environment are the most successful in surviving and reproducing.

Detailed explanation-3: -Darwin and a scientific contemporary of his, Alfred Russel Wallace, proposed that evolution occurs because of a phenomenon called natural selection. In the theory of natural selection, organisms produce more offspring than are able to survive in their environment.

Detailed explanation-4: -The Principles of Biology by Herbert Spencer (1864) looked at biology in terms of themes, such as Function, Adaptation and Variation. In this book Spencer introduced the expression ‘survival of the fittest’, in the sense of ‘the most appropriate to its environment’.

Detailed explanation-5: -The social Darwinists-notably Spencer and Walter Bagehot in England and William Graham Sumner in the United States-believed that the process of natural selection acting on variations in the population would result in the survival of the best competitors and in continuing improvement in the population.