Evolutionism and Its Critics is a critical history of evolutionary theories in the social sciences and a defense of them against their many critics. Sanderson deconstructs not only the wide array of social evolutionary theories, but the criticisms of the antievolutionists. Deconstructing evolutionary theories means laying bare their fundamental epistemological, methodological, conceptual, and theoretical assumptions and principles. Deconstructing antievolutionism means showing just where and how the critics have, for the most part, gone wrong. But Evolutionism and Its Critics aims to reconstruct as well as deconstruct and does this by building on the shoulders of past giants of evolutionary theorizing a comprehensive evolutionary interpretation of human society based on abundant scientific and historical evidence.
Author(s): Stephen K. Sanderson
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2007
Language: English
Pages: 385
1. The Nature of Social Evolutionism 2. Classical Evolutionism: I 3. The Antievolutionary Reaction 4. Marxism as Evolutionism 5. Classical Evolutionism: II 6. The Evolutionary Revival 7. Sociological Evolutionism: I 8. Anthropological Evolutionism Since 1960 9. Sociological Evolutionism: II 10. Evolutionary Biology and Social Evolutionism 11. Contemporary Antievolutionism 12. Evolutionary Materialism: A General Theory of Social Evolution
