ABSTRACT
Throughout the development of sociology an important topic has always been the question of the forces accounting for social change, especially in the context of a concern for the forces accounting for social order and peaceful continuity. Periodically, and especially since the work of Herbert Spencer, scholars have addressed the question of whether an evolutionary framework would be appropriate to the study of sociocultural change. A bad taste for it, however, was left in the mouths of many social scientists after the sociologist, and trained biologist, Lester Ward successfully discredited the attempt of the anthropologist William Graham Sumner and colleagues to disseminate a theory of Social Darwinism. This travesty of social science claimed, among other questionable things, that the poor and destitute in society represent the unfit in the struggle for survival and should be granted at most a bare minimum of charity, whereas the wealthy, especially the successful businessman,
represented the fittest. (It is especially disconcerting that many U.s. Congresspeople, it would seem from their statements and voting records, adhere to this baseless ideology.) It appears that most attempts to promote biological explanations of societal features are associated with, or generate arguments over, ideological or discriminatory bias. We attempt, in this article, to reopen the question of sociocultural evolution from a purely scientific point of view.
