2001 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary

Comparative Study on the Reception of Darwinism

Research Project

Project/Area Number	12490020
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B)
Allocation Type	Single-year Grants
Section	一般
Research Field	広領域
Research Institution	KYOTO UNIVERSITY
Principal Investigator	SAKAGAMI Takashi Institute for Research in Humanities, KYOTO UNIVERSITY, professor, 人文科学研究所, 教授 (70047166)
Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha)	TAKEZAWA Yasuko Institute for Research in Humanities, KYOTO UNIVERSITY, Assistant Professor, 人文科学研究所, 助教授 (70227015) YAGI Keiichiro Graduate School of Economic, KYOTO UNIVERSITY professo, 経済学研究科, 教授 (30116511) OHIGASHI Yoshitaka Center for Student Exchanges, KYOTO UNIVERSITY, professo, 留学生センター, 教授 (90169053) KOBAYASHI Hiroyuki Institute for Research in Humanities, KYOTO UNIVERSITY, Instructor, 人文科学研究所, 助手 (00293952) KITAGAKI Toru Institute for Research in Humanities, KYOTO UNIVERSITY, Instructor, 人文科学研究所, 助手 (50283669)
Project Period (FY)	2000 – 2001
Keywords	Evolutionism / Darwinism / Sociobiology / Eugenics / Race / Darwin / Spencer / Lamarck
Research Abstract	Since the publication of Darwin's The Origin of Species, evolutionism has produced great effects on various fields. First of all, in contrast witli the ancient natural history which was exclusively preoccupied with the static classification of species, it has given rise to a dynamic comprehension of life based on the principles such as "struggle of existence" or "natural selection". It has not only limited itself to a mere biological theory ; but contributed greatly to the paradigm shift in human and social sciences such as philosophy, psychology, economics, sociology, anthropology, etc. And with the term of "social Darwinism", we already know much about its ideological application to the explication and the justification of social and political phenomena. Organized with several researchers working on different specific topics, our research aimed basically to explore such interdisciplinary and multidimensional impact of evolutionism. One of the essential understandings we have finally o … More btained is that evolutional concepts sometimes have contradictory ambiguity. Capitalists and socialists remain both to be evolutionist, for example, attaching the opposite meaning to the idea of struggle of existence. This is partly because evolutionary thought had drawn its inspiration not only from Darwin, but from various authors. Though much is not mentioned to him in our time, Spencer had great theoretical influence in the late nineteenth century : his system includes various disciplines which encompass from metaphysics to social theory. Preceding half a century to Darwin, Lamarck had developed in France his own evolutionary thought, with the emphasis on the inheritance of acquired characters and the internal force of evolution. And it is well known that the author of The Origin of Species owed much to Malthus and his political economy theory on population. Thus evolutionism consists essentially in the complicated assemblage of knowledge which has reciprocating action by the term of metaphors and analogies, among several disciplines, or between science and society. In this intellectual process, there has sometimes been misunderstandings and theoretical distortions which we made efforts to describe in our research. Less