Word: darwinism
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...outer, self and not-self do not impress him as constituting a priori givens. Rather, he views them as "results of a later classification performed by us for particular needs." The classification or categorization is made for its utility, for its survival value; this should recall the influence of Darwin. Animals do not have a sense of self--they live in a state prior to Cogito ergo sum. So do infants. And this leads at last to Freud and his developmental scheme. "The id," Freud writes, "contains everything that is inherited, that is fixed in the constitution--above all, therefore...
Thus began the long Marxist offensive that eventually led to Communism and fascism. Just as the U.S. had succeeded in tempering and transforming the forces that became the French Revolution, it tempered and transformed the Socialist Revolution. America had its age of ruggedly individualistic businessmen, when popularizers turned Darwin's theory of natural selection into a doctrine of economic predestination, according to which the damnation of the weak was a law of nature. But out of this era grew the sometimes uneasy partnership between business and government that in effect built a capitalist welfare state and an almost universal middle...
...colleges were founded by churches, and dogma long kept a restraining hand on evidential inquiry. Then came state universities, dominated by legislatures and Governors, who control the purse strings. Vulnerable to doctrinal or political pressures, professors have been fired for views on everything from slavery and secession to Darwin and free silver to sex and Cuba...
...clearly assumed the status of a national school; the celebrities, more often than in the Civil War era, actually taught courses. This period was especially a golden age for the philosophy department. At one time James, Josiah Royce, George Santayana, George Herbert Palmer, and Hugo Munsterberg all held appointments. Darwin, Hegel, and Helmholtz had progressively gained influence through the intervening years. On the other hand, operationalism, behaviorism, and the Freud Bomb had not yet burst upon the American scene...
...Rector McDonald vetoed as "imprudent" a proposed C.U. symposium on evolution and Christian theology during the Darwin centennial in 1959-while similar symposiums were held at three other Catholic universities (Fordham, Duquesne, and Chicago's Loyola). ¶ Sociologist Father Raymond Plotvin was forced to withdraw from a major study of family planning in cooperation with Jesuit Georgetown University. Reason: McDonald refused to approve Plotvin's request for a Ford Foundation grant to study "family size preference of American Catholic college girls" because the subject was "too controversial...