Bricks without straw: Darwinism in the social sciences

Abstract

The so-called evolutionary social sciences are based on the belief that Darwinism can explain the living world and that it therefore should be able to explain other complex systems such as minds and societies. In fact, Darwinism cannot explain biological evolution. It does make an important contribution, but this is towards understanding adaptation, which is a major problem in biology but not in the social sciences. Darwinism has much less to offer to the social sciences than to biology and the shortcomings it brings with it are much greater.