Short-answer question (SAQ)

Pearson and Social Darwinism

Unit 7
3 points
About 13 minutes

You read one source and answer three short parts (A, B and C) about it, each in a few sentences. Each part asks you to describe or explain something about the source or the history around it. On the exam: 3 required questions in 40 minutes (Section I, Part B), 20% of the score. Starting May 2027 every SAQ has a source: question 1 a secondary text, question 2 a primary text, question 3 a non-text source such as an image, map or chart.

The question and its sources

Use the passage below to answer all parts of the question that follows. The passage expresses racist ideas that many Europeans held at the time and that modern science rejects.

Passage

. . . The struggle for existence among nations will not necessarily be settled in favour of the biggest nation, nor in favour of the best-armed nation, nor in favour of the nation with the greatest material resources. I speak not only of war, but of the more silent, but none the less intense, struggle of peace — the struggle for trade, for commercial supremacy, for new sources of food supply, for mineral wealth, and for the raw materials of manufacture. . . .

History shows me one way, and one way only, in which a high state of civilization has been produced, namely, the struggle of race with race, and the survival of the physically and mentally fitter race. . . .

This dependence of progress on the survival of the fitter race, terribly black as it may seem to some of you, gives the struggle for existence its redeeming features; it is the fiery crucible out of which comes the finer metal.

Source: Karl Pearson, British mathematician and a leading supporter of eugenics, National Life from the Standpoint of Science, a public lecture given in Newcastle, England, on November 19, 1900, during the South African (Boer) War. Published London: Adam and Charles Black, 1901.

Suggested time: 13 minutes

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Part (a)

1 point

Describe Pearson's argument about how nations and civilizations make progress.

Your answer to part (a)

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Part (b)

1 point

Explain how Pearson's argument reflects ONE way Charles Darwin's ideas were applied to society in the period 1859–1914.

Your answer to part (b)

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Part (c)

1 point

Explain ONE way European imperialism was criticized OR resisted in the period 1880–1914.

Your answer to part (c)

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