Evolutionary Theory

Evolutionary Theories

During the 19th century, the evolutionary perspective became dominant in understanding social change. Auguste Comte, L. H. Morgan, and Herbert Spencer were the major proponents of this theory. They believed that society is the outcome of the constant process of evolution. It starts with a simple beginning to a more complex form. Evolutionary theorists consider social change in a positive sense. The theory was highly influenced by Darwin’s theory of organic evolution. The Darwinian model of biological evolution was applied by the evolutionary theorists who considered society as an organism to understand social evolution.

1. Auguste Comte (1798–1857)

Auguste Comte believed that human societies evolve in a unilinear way. He described three stages of social evolution. He framed the ‘law of three stages’ or ‘the law of Human Progress’, the law that governed the social world. He felt that the human mind, all knowledge, human beings, and the entire history of the world developed through these three stages. A brief description of these three states is as follows:

i. The Theological or fictitious stage:  

According to Comte, in this stage, “all theoretical conceptions, whether general or special, bear a supernatural impress”. Unable to discover the natural causes of various events, primitive men attributed them to imaginary or divine forces. In this stage, Comte divided the theological stage into four sub-stages.

a) Fetishism: During this sub-stage, man accepts the existence of the spirit or the soul. It did not admit priesthood.

b) Anthropomorphism: It is the second sub-stage in theological stage. With the gradual evolution of human thought, a change or improvement occurred, leading to the emergence of this stage.

c) Polytheism: During this sub-stage, man begins to believe in magic and allied activities. He then transplants or imposes a special god in every object. Thus, they believed in several gods and created a class of priests to secure the goodwill and blessings of these gods.

d) Monotheism: During this sub-stage of the theological stage, man believes that there is only one centre of power which guides and controls all the activities of the world. Thus, man believed in the superhuman power of only one god.

ii. The Metaphysical or abstract stage: 

In this stage, an improvement upon the earlier one, it was believed that abstract power or force guides and determines events in the world. Metaphysical thinking discards belief in a concrete god.

iii. The Scientific or positive stage: 

The dawn of the nineteenth century marked the beginning of the positive stage in which “observation predominates over imagination”, and all theoretical concepts have become positive. In this final stage, dominated by industrial administrators and scientists, the nature of human mind has given up its childish and vain search for Absolute notions, origins and destinations of the universe and its causes, but seeks to establish scientific principles governing phenomena.

Auguste Comte maintained that each stage of the development of human thought necessarily grew out of the preceding one. Only when the previous stage exhausts itself does the new stage develop. He also correlated the three stages of human thought with the development of social organisation, types of social order, types of social units, and material conditions in society. He believes that each successive stage grew out of the preceding one. The constitution of a new system cannot take place until the destruction of the earlier one happens.

2. Émile Durkheim (1858—1917)

Émile Durkheim, in The Division of Labour in Society (1893/2013), proposed a non-unilinear evolutionary account of societal development, arguing that societies progress from mechanical solidarity, characterised by similarity, a shared collective conscience, and repressive law, to organic solidarity, which is based on the interdependence of specialised roles and restitutive law. The primary driver of this transformation is the growth of “dynamic” or “moral density,” as increasing population and intensified social interaction foster competition and necessitate a more complex division of labour. Durkheim’s account is evolutionary in its direction but fundamentally sociological in its mechanism, focusing on social and normative changes rather than biological factors. He also introduced the concept of anomie, describing the social pathology that arises when rapid change in the division of labour outpaces the development of adequate normative regulation, leading to instability and a breakdown of social cohesion. Durkheim’s major contribution lies in demonstrating how increasing social differentiation creates new forms of cohesion and adaptation within modern societies.

3. Lewis Henry Morgan (1818–1881)

L. H. Morgan’s model of evolution contends that all societies passed through three basic stages of evolution, viz., savagery, barbarism and civilisation. The savagery stage comprised the transition from human infancy to the development of some handy tools and fire. The barbarism phase is characterised by the invention of pottery, animal domestication, the use of metal tools, and irrigation, among other developments. The civilisation stage comprises the invention of the alphabet and the development of language. Morgan further subdivided the Savagery and barbarism into three stages:

i. Savagery:

a) Lower Stage: In this stage, forests and trees were the places of shelter for human beings. Wild fruits, nuts, and other foods were taken as food.

b) Middle Stage: The movement of human beings started from one geographical area to another. Fire was also invented in this stage.

c) Upper Stage: Bows and arrows were invented. The skill of hunting developed with the invention of the bow and arrow.

ii. Barbarism:

a) Lower Stage: This is a relatively more advanced stage than savagery. People used pottery items in this phase.

b) Middle Stage: Domestication of animals started. Settled cultivation and techniques of house making developed.

c) Upper Stage: Use of metals like iron, as well as the art of writing, developed in this stage.

iii. Civilisation:

a) From the Invention of a Phonetic Alphabet, with the use of writing, to the present time.

Morgan contended that each stage and sub-stage was initiated by a major technological invention. For example, he considered pottery characteristic of lower barbarism, domestication of plants and animals characteristic of middle barbarism, and iron tools characteristic of upper barbarism. Civilisation was heralded by the invention of the phonetic alphabet, and the organisation of political society on a territorial basis was the line of demarcation where modern civilisation began.

4. Herbert Spencer (1820–1903)

Herbert Spencer, a 19th-century anthropologist, developed the idea of Social Darwinism. Social Darwinism is the application of Darwin’s theory of natural selection in the social domain. Charles Darwin in his seminal work on The Origin of Species (1859) focused on the evolution of animals and plants. Spencer’s Social Darwinism is centred on two fundamental principles that are discussed below:

i. The principle of the survival of the fittest: Spencer fully endorsed the natural process of conflict and survival that operates as a kind of biologically purifying process. According to him, nature is endowed with a providential tendency to get rid of the unfit and to make room for the better; it is the law of nature that the weak should be eliminated for the sake of the strong.

ii. The principle of non-interference: Spencer was a serious advocate of individualism and laissez-faire politics. He opposed almost any form of state interference with private activity. He insisted that the state had no business in education, health, sanitation, postal services, money and banking, regulation of housing conditions, or the elimination of poverty. For Spencer, the state was a sort of joint-stock company whose only role was the protection of the rights of the individual and defence of its citizens against external aggression. Spencer held that sociologists should persuade the state and citizens not to intervene in the natural process of selection at work in society.

Social Darwinism holds that human beings or social groups like animals and plants compete in a struggle for existence in society. For Spencer, through competition, social evolution would automatically produce prosperity and personal liberty unparalleled in human history. The social policy should allow the weak and unfit to fail and die. Social Darwinism considers such an eventuality as moral and natural.

The contemporary Evolution Theories propagate ‘multilinear’ development rather than a unilinear one. In the process of social development from simple to complex, society enables variations in how change takes place across different subsystems. As a result, it produces a multilinear pattern of change. For instance, there may be rapid growth in industries, but ideological change may be less pronounced. At the same time, different ideologies originate. The health facilities may grow, but the infrastructure facilities may be fewer. But many developments in medical specialisations may branch off. In art, many new patterns might emerge.