Herbert Spencer applied these evolutionary principles to human society and was followed by others in business and in politics. In the world of commerce, Sumner of Harvard taught that the efficiency of an enterprise was honed by the predatory capitalist growth of big corporations intent on getting even bigger and more predatory. Every boardroom takeover was like a shoot out at the O.K. Corral and the surviving capitalist predator was bigger and hungrier as a result. In such a system there was no room for welfare, for unions, nor for health and social care. The weak go to the wall, which is where they belong. Only the strong survive.
More recent politicians have attempted to follow this teaching, usually with some modifications. None has been able to carry it out to a logical conclusion for to do so would be to go against our own nature where compassion and sympathy are also part of our emotional makeup unless we are thoroughly depraved.
Thinking of depravity we might find names like Attila the Hun spring to mind. In more recent times and with a completely materialistic and evolutionary scheme of thought one may give Hitler and Stalin as examples. Go far enough to the left or far enough to the right in politics and one inevitably comes to a one party state with all the panoply of tyranny at its beck and call.
In the nineteenth century lived two philosophers, both German in origin, Nietzsche and Marx. Nietzsche was anti-Christian and argued that “the will to power” was all that made sense in international and in most social relations. Of course others also added to the crack pot thinking that corrupted many of the German universities but this heady mixture of race, of evolution and of militarism was put to music, as it were. by Wagner. Hitler taught that the strong survived and determined that the German super race should survive at the expense of the Slavic peoples to the east of Europe and of those regarded as unfit among his own people. That included disabled, Gypsies and, of course, in particular, the Jews.
Meanwhile, further to the east, Stalin had built, on Lenin's seizure of power, itself a parody of Marxist teaching, an equally grim superstate with that same organization of tyranny and despotism, a secret police, a system of prison camps and police spies where any criticism was to be ruthlessly stamped out. It is arguable which of the two monsters was more evil; the point is merely academic.
Just as Hobbes taught that religious dissidents were to be discouraged so materialism cannot stand criticism. As Hitler taught the Nazi judges, what is good for the leader and the party is to be the principle underlying all legal thinking. Materialism has no sense of humour and a massive sense of is own importance.
Science
Science, by its very nature is materialistic. It is the study of the material world. It tries to observe things, to explain the phenomena it observes and then to test the hypotheses given to explain what is observed. The problems here are several. First when an observer is present the situation becomes altered. Animals and birds behave in various ways but when bird or animal watchers arrive the situation is altered. Often this makes little difference but we can never be sure since we can never know what the phenomenon would have been like if we had not been present in some form or another.
Secondly science can only really prove what is not. People thought that smells caused disease. It seemed a fair observation. Then enough people began to find microscopic life and speculated whether minute living creatures might not cause infection, or be the infection. Pasteur finally came up with a germ theory and Joseph Lister applied these findings to surgery. The search for anti-biotics seemed to be the answer to all our problems until the misuse of these showed up some fallacies in the theory. No science can actually prove what is so the oft repeated assertion that "science has disproved God," or the Bible, or religion, is a rather silly statement.
Science is also a human institution and subject to all the faults of such systems. It has a career structure and a jargon all of its own. Anyone offending the beliefs within which science works is likely to be shut out. He, or she, will not be able to publish their research findings and they will not be promoted to the positions their skills entitle them to. It often takes years to break down the prejudices of scientists before overwhelming evidence tells them that an idea is dead and should be buried. Ages after Lister showed the success of his antiseptic surgery leading surgeons were making such stupid remarks as, “quick, shut the door, one of Mr. Lister's germs might get in!”
