*William Grant Sumner (1840-1910) applied evolutionary principles to political economics at Yale University. He taught many of America’s future business and industrial leaders that strong business should succeed and the weak perish, and that to help the unfit was to injure the fit and accomplish nothing for society (*R. Milner, Encyclopedia of Evolution, 1990, pp. 59, 446, 72). Millionaires were, in his thinking, the “fittest.” Modern laissez-faire capitalism was the result (*Gilman M. Ostrander, The Evolutionary Outlook: 1875-1900, 1971, p. 5).

*William James (1842-1910) was another evolutionist who influenced American thinking. His view of psychology placed the study of human behavior on an animalistic evolutionary basis.(1890). *George Darwin, son of *Charles Darwin, wanted to come up with something original, so he invented the theory that four million years ago the moon was pressed nearly against the earth, which revolved every five hours.—Then one day, a heavy tide occurred in the oceans, which lifted it out to its present location! Later proponents of George’s theory decided that the Pacific Basin is the hole the moon left behind, when those large ocean waves pushed it out into space.

Tidal Hypothesis Theory (1890). *George Darwin, son of *Charles Darwin, wanted to come up with something original, so he invented the theory that four million years ago the moon was pressed nearly against the earth, which revolved every five hours.—Then one day, a heavy tide occurred in the oceans, which lifted it out to its present location! Later proponents of George’s theory decided that the Pacific Basin is the hole the moon left behind, when those large ocean waves pushed it out into space.

Source: Evolution Handbook