Word: quo
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Latter-day sociobiologists cannot contest the impact that Spencer's sociology-biology had on nineteenth-century society. The Social Darwinism of the time, much of which was rooted in Spencer's principles, gained popular acceptance and provided a handy justification for the status quo and for a repudiation of state interference on behalf of society's welfare. Because Spencer's society was evolving naturally, any such tampering would result in disaster. These theories, embraced by upper and middle classes alike in America, provided these classes with a rationale for opposing all social reform. The phrase "survival of the fittest," taken...
...political climate in the nation changed from one of conservatism to one of relative liberalism, Spencerian theory rapidly lost its credence. Educators and policy-makers began to see it for what it was, a self-serving, scientifically-bankrupt explanation for maintaining the status quo...
...Sociobiology as simply the latest manifestation of the Spencerian notion. An explanation for the persistence of these theories, a group of Boston scientists wrote late last year in the New York Review of Books, is that such theories "consistently tend to provide a genetic justification of the status quo and of existing privileges for certain groups according to class, race...
Wilson says he does feel a responsibility to warn those who would politically misuse his theories as a justification of the status quo. But he cannot keep people, if they represent the ruling interests in a society, from seizing on his theories as a defense for the currently unequal distribution of justice, income, services and goods...
...relationship of 18 months lingered on--a superficial symbol of what I still believed to be the status quo...