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Social Darwinism was an intellectual movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries that merged Charles Darwin's biological theory of evolution with theories about human economies and societies. Social Darwinism indirectly contributed to German militarism and World War I. Scholars continue to debate the extent to which Social Darwinism underpinned British, European, and American poor laws, philanthropy, and eugenics.

This Element is a philosophical history of Social Darwinism. It begins by discussing the meaning of the term, moving then to its origins, paying particular attention to whether it is Charles Darwin or Herbert Spencer who is the true father of the idea. It gives an exposition of early thinking on the subject, covering Darwin and Spencer themselves and then on to Social Darwinism as found in American thought, with special emphasis on Andrew Carnegie, and Germany with special emphasis on Friedrich von Bernhardi. Attention is also paid to outliers, notably the Englishman Alfred Russel Wallace, the Russian Peter Kropotkin, and the German Friedrich Nietzsche. From here we move into the twentieth century looking at Adolf Hitler - hardly a regular Social Darwinian given he did not believe in evolution - and in the Anglophone world, Julian Huxley and Edward O. Wilson, who reflected the concerns of their society.

This book chapter is in closed access. ; Charles Darwin's work had an important, but complex, impact on social thinking in the nineteenth century. Although the language of evolution was integral to social thought before publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859, social theorists increasingly turned to evolutionary theory to help understand human societies as the significance of Darwin's contribution to the biological sciences became more apparent. Social Darwinism encompassed a melange of competing ideas, and had appeal across the political spectrum, but it nevertheless became a crucial component of theoretical interventions that were integral to the formation of modern sociology.

If the 20th Century was the century of physics, the 21st Century is the century of cybernetics, biology and ecology. Technological advance has both crossed new frontiers and discovered old limits.Nobel laureate Ilya Prigogine broke new ground with his understanding that nature, including its human component, seeks to establish order out of chaos by "self‐organizing," not only according to pre‐determined laws, but through random creative choices as well that are responsible for the endless novelty and potentiality of being.The technologically‐armed purposive role of humans in the Anthropocentric Age thus takes on a new significance: "What we do today depends on our image of the future rather than the future depending on what we do today" as Prigogine puts it. "The equations of the future are written in our actions as well as in nature. Time becomes construction."Nowhere is this truer than in the new science of genomics, which touches the soul, and in the effort to preserve the ecological balance that has enabled humanity to flourish within the narrow band of earth's livable climate.In this section we bring together leading thinkers, scientists and technologists of our age to address these issues of mankind's fate.