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Evolutionism has a variety of meanings, some of which are:
- As used by creationists - advocacy of or belief in biological evolution; see Creation vs. evolution debate [1] (http://www.bartleby.com/61/65/E0256500.html)
- As used by 19th century cultural anthropologists, such as Lewis Henry Morgan - a now discredited theory that human civilizations develop linearly in a "sequence of progress" from savagery, through barbarism, to finally civilization; see Linear progress (Lewis Henry Morgan, Ancient Society, 1877)
- As used in Marxist theory - the idea that, independent of biological evolution, changes in the mode of production produced conflicts with the old structures of society such that the conflicts could be resolved only by changes in the political, judicial, and moral values in the society; see Social determinism
- As used by historians of human ideas and theories of knowledge - such as Arthur Lovejoy, a concept that the ideas of succeeding generations grew from the possibilities in the ideas of the previous generations; see History of ideas
- As used by scholars of Judaism - the secularization of Messianism into two optimistic views of progress: 1) economics of socialism or 2) politics of Zionism; see Judaism
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