Mudsill theory

(noun)

A sociological idea that there must be, and always has been, a lower class for the upper classes to rest upon; the name is derived from the lowest threshold that supports the foundation for a building.

Related Terms

Examples of Mudsill theory in the following topics:

  • The Proslavery Argument

    • This "mudsill theory" supposed that there must be, and has always been, a lower class for the upper classes to rest upon.
    • (The mudsill is the lowest layer that supports the foundation of a building.)
    • In this view, any efforts toward class or racial equality ran counter to this theory and therefore ran counter to civilization itself.
    • Senate advocating the "positive good" theory of slavery, declaring that slavery was, "instead of an evil, a good—a positive good."
    • James Henry Hammond's 1858 "Mudsill Speech" argued that slavery would eliminate social ills by eliminating the class of landless poor.

  • Conclusion: The State of Slavery before the War

    • Henry James Hammond’s “mudsill theory” argued that upper classes required a lower class to rest upon in order to enable the higher classes to move civilization forward.

  • Pragmatism

    • Pragmatism, a philosophical movement during the 1870s, is a philosophical tradition centered on the linking of practice and theory.
    • Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition centered on the linking of practice and theory.
    • It describes a process in which theory is extracted from practice and applied back to practice to form what is called intelligent practice.
    • Active process of theory generation with no prior assurance of truth
    • Subsequent application of the contingent theory in order to clarify its logical and practical implications

  • The Debate over American Imperialism

    • Journalist Ashley Smith divides theories of the U.S. imperialism into five broad categories: (1) "Liberal" theories, (2) "social-democratic" theories, (3) "Leninist" theories, (4) theories of "super-imperialism," and (5) "Hardt-and-Negri-ite" theories.
    • A "social-democratic" theory says that imperialistic U.S. policies are the products of the excessive influence of certain sectors of U.S. business and government—the arms industry in alliance with military and political bureaucracies and sometimes other industries such as oil and finance, a combination often referred to as the "military-industrial complex. " The complex is said to benefit from war profiteering and the looting of natural resources, often at the expense of the public interest.

  • African and Asian Origins

    • Genetic evidence found in Paleo-Indians' mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) supports the theory of multiple genetic populations migrating from Asia.
    • Coastal or "watercraft" theories have broad implications, one being that Paleo-Indians in North America may not have been purely terrestrial big-game hunters, but instead were already adapted to maritime or semi-maritime lifestyles.
    • One theory suggests people in boats followed the coastline from the Kuril Islands to Alaska, and then down the coasts of North and South America as far as Chile .
    • One theory suggests that Southeast Asians followed the coast lines from the Kuril Islands to Alaska.
    • Map of early human migrations based on the Out of Africa theory

  • Archaeology and History

    • A number of scientific studies into genetics, time-dating, and paleo-environmental data have been conducted to test these theories.
    • Genetic evidence found in Amer-Indians' mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) supports the theory of multiple, distinct genetic populations migrating from Asia.
    • The first is the short chronology theory, with the first movement beyond Alaska into the Americas occurring no earlier than 14,000 to 17,000 years ago, followed by successive waves of migration.
    • The second approach is the long chronology theory, which proposes that the first group of people entered these continents at a much earlier date, possibly 50,000 to 40,000 years ago or even earlier.
    • The archaeological record in the Americas is divided into five phases according to an enduring system established in Gordon Willey and Philip Phillips' 1958 book Method and Theory in American Archaeology.

  • The Scopes Trial

    • The trial instigated by the American Civil Liberties Union was mostly for show, but had major implications for the issue of whether modern science could be taught in public schools by pitting the Fundamentalist Christian belief of Creationism against the Theory of Evolution.
    • The ACLU recruited Scopes, 25, to purposefully incriminate himself so the case could have a defendant by using a textbook chapter that described the Theory of Evolution on May 5, 1925.
    • Prominent attorney Clarence Darrow spoke in defense of Scopes by presenting the Modernist argument in favor of the Theory of Evolution.
    • Based on research in Charles Darwin’s 1859 book, On the Origin of Species, the theory contends that man developed over millions of years from other biological organisms, including apes (hence the nickname "Scopes Monkey Trial.")
    • As the anti-evolutionist movement died out in the mid-1930s, biology textbooks began to include the previously removed evolutionary theory.

  • Populism and Religion

    • In 1905, Bryan noted that "the Darwinian theory represents man reaching his present perfection by the operation of the law of hate, the merciless law by which the strong crowd out and kill off the weak.
    • Bryan opposed the theory of evolution for two reasons.
    • The Sprunt lectures were published as In His Image, and sold over 100,000 copies, while "The Origin of Man" was published separately as The Menace of the Theory of Evolution and also sold very well.

  • Social Darwinism in America

    • Social Darwinism is a name given to various theories of society which emerged in the United Kingdom, North America, and Western Europe in the 1870s, and which claim to apply biological concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest to sociology and politics.
    • Many such views stress competition between individuals in laissez-faire capitalism, while others frequently linked evolution, Charles Darwin and social Darwinism with racialism, nationalism, imperialism and eugenics, contending that social Darwinism became one of the pillars of fascism and Nazi ideology, and that the consequences of the application of policies of "survival of the fittest" by Nazi Germany eventually created a very strong backlash against the theory.
    • Burgess, and others developed theories of social evolution as a result of their exposure to the works of Darwin and Spencer.
    • However, the great majority of American businessmen rejected the anti-philanthropic implications of the theory.

  • The Right to Vote

    • Voting theory became an object of academic study around the time of the French Revolution.
    • While Condorcet and Borda are usually credited as the founders of voting theory, recent research has shown that the philosopher Ramon Llull discovered both the Borda count and a pairwise method that satisfied the Condorcet criterion in the 13th century.