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Ethics.

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Moral Science is vigorously reproached for its failures. It is thought to have little or no claim to be called a science, and to need at once new foundations and new methods. Without denying entirely the force of these criticisms, we must yet regard them as springing from a very inadequate view of the topic. Science is thought of as a kind of exact, almost mathematical, knowledge; and every field of inquiry which does not and can not yield such results is dismissed to limbo. This sentiment narrows knowledge stupidly, and wastes life foolishly. We can not express the terms of our being, nor the career of any human soul, the simplest, in a formula; and that we can not involves all the superiority of the moral world. Yet a light is none the less a light because it needs often to be trimmed and fed. We are to discuss morals, but we are to discuss them as morals, and search for knowledge in the measure and the manner that the facts admit of. Our knowledge will not lose in value because it touches such a variety of circumstances, and touches us in turn so constantly and at so many points. Nor will it have less dignity because it lacks the limitations of simple physical forces. We seek insight, and insight is too variable, comprehensive and grand an act to expire finally in a formula. If we insist, then, on judging Moral Science by tests taken from other departments of knowledge, we may easily disparage the results hitherto reached; but if, with a wiser application of the inductive method, we allow this field of inquiry to remain under its own peculiar limitations, and judge it in recognition of its own nature, we shall be satisfied, first, that conclusions of great value have already been reached; and, secondly, that real progress is being made, if not all the progress one would desire". (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).

Ethics, Evolutionary.

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General ethics

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Ethics --- Morale

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Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), Victorian philosopher, biologist, sociologist and political theorist, one of the founders of Social Darwinism and author of the phrase 'survival of the fittest', was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1902, losing out to Theodor Mommsen. Spencer left his post at The Economist in 1857 to focus on writing his ten-volume System of Synthetic Philosophy, a work that offers an ethics-based guide to human conduct to replace that provided by conventional religious belief. Published in 1879, this volume seeks to demonstrate that social evolution tends towards greater individualism, altruism and co-operation. Spencer argues that it is possible to establish rules of right conduct on a scientific basis, and declares that this work is the culmination of his life's study. He was anxious to publish it outside the planned order of the System, because he feared (wrongly) that his death would prevent its completion.

Ethics, Evolutionary --- Philosophy