Barry Werth's new book earns a Starred Review from Publishers Weekly: In this fascinating study, Werth shows how the idea of social Darwinism, as codified by Herbert Spencer, took hold in the United States, underpinning the philosophy of the Gilded Age's social, cultural and financial elite. Anchoring his story with the stunning Delmonico's celebration honoring the departure of Spencer after a triumphant tour of the United States in 1882, Werth rightly depicts the frame of reference Spencer left behind as a predecessor to Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism, with its focus on unrestrained self-interest and unbridled capitalism. As Werth explains, Spencer's interpretation of Darwinism won the approval of not only robber barons but also prominent religious, scientific and political leaders. Henry Ward Beecher, writes Werth, used the most acclaimed pulpit in America to preach the gospel of evolution; that is, that it was God's way to... sort the worthy from the wretched. This was survival of the fittest, which Spencer and his followers saw as not only just but necessary. Thus, Werth elegantly reveals a firm philosophical foundation for all the antilabor excesses of the Industrial Age.
From The Metaphysical Club, by Louis Menand: If we strain out the differences, personal and philosophical, they had with one another, we can say that what these four thinkers had in common was not a group of ideas, but a single idea -- an idea about ideas. They all believed that ideas are not "out there" waiting to be discovered, but are tools -- like forks and knives and microchips -- that people devise to cope with the world in which they find themselves. They believed that ideas are produced not by individuals, but by groups of individuals -- that ideas are social. They believed that ideas do not develop according to some inner logic of their own, but are entirely dependent, like germs, on their human carriers and the environment. And they believed that since ideas are provisional responses to particular and unreproducible circumstances, their survival depends not on their immutability but on their adaptability.
On ephemera: Let's start with an assumption: "Everything we post online is ephemeral." Now, if we start with that assumption, how does that change our approach to what we put online? To me, there are two likely reactions: (a) post more! It doesn't matter how verbose you are, little of what you say will last very long (b) post less! There's no point clogging up the net with ephemera; only post that which is essential; keep your ephemera to yourself I've been wondering about it all. I've been thinking that perhaps I should make paper-based outputs of anything that I want to really last. By all means clog up the net with everything else in the meantime, but don't form any attachment to it. Don't depend on it being there.
Banquet at Delmonico's: Great Minds, the Gilded Age, and the Triumph of Evolution in America | 
