Social Evolutionism: a Critical History by Stephen K. Sanderson (Book review)

Abstract

The trouble with most social scientists’ views of evolution today is that they are filled with cliches. Sanderson challenges these with a careful, detailed, and illuminating critique. He claims that while there has been some factual basis for a few of these objections, they have not come close to responding to the current state of social evolutionism for quite some time. Whatever one thinks of the paradigm, there can be no reasonable doubt that most of the criticisms of it in the sociological literature are outdated attacks on a relatively minor part of what has become a very large, and perhaps great, contribution to the science of global history.