Carl Dassbach asks why we should continue to use the term evolution given the
misunderstandings and miusages of the concept that abound. My answer is
because it is one of the most magnificent concepts that has ever been
formulated. Look at what it's done for the biological sciences and for a large
part of anthropology. It has fantastic explanatory power and a tremendous
capacity to unify. It can do much the same for the social sciences, so let's
not discard it.
I might just note that in its original usage the term evolution derives from
the Latin "evolutis," meaning "an unrolling." This is certainly teleological
in implication, no denying that. But virtually no evolutionary biologist that
I know of today wants to think of evolution as a teleological process. If the
biologists can discard this original meaning but continue to use the term,
then social scientists can (and should) too.
For more details, see my Social Evolutionism book.
Stephen Sanderson