“Darwinism” is, at best, a loaded term - like a rorshach drawing in which every observer sees what he wants to (or doesn’t want to) see.
Einstein was rather preterbed at the postmodernists glomming on to his theory or relativity as any sort of confirmation that the universe is disjointed or that reality is meaningless. He saw relativity as an essential symmetry to the universe, that the effect of acceleration caused by gravity was functionally equivalent to the acceleration caused by mechanical force.
So Einstein would not be an “Einsteinist” in the sense that the postmodernists would have it.
I do not venerate Darwin, nor draw wildly extravagent philosophical extrapolations based upon his theory. I do not accept “Darwinism” by my own, or probably most others explanation of that (loaded) term. But I do accept the theory of natural selection of genetic variation as the most useful and predictive model to explain biological evolution.
How else are we going to explain the observations? What else is there?
“Einstein was rather perturbed at the postmodernists glomming on to his theory or relativity as any sort of confirmation that the universe is disjointed”
Yes. I might blame Einstein for some of the wackier forms relatvism, especially considering some of his popular non-scientific writings, for instance the theory of “finite but unbounded.” But Einsteinian relativism is not postmodern relativism, and much of it can be found in the sort of garden variety relativism in which we all believe. The term “Einsteinism,” like Darwinism, might be appropriate even though Einstein isn’t strictly responsible for it.
I believe non-scientific Darwinism to be a real historical phenomenon, and I don’t think much of it has to do specifically with Darwin’s writings. Partly this is to do with the fact that the larger idea of evolution was highly developed and widely believed in before Darwin was born. Because of the elegance and practical success of natural selection he happened to become the most famous exponent of the bigger idea. But it could just as easily been someone else.
When I think of all the different names associated with Darwinism, from TH Huxley and Spencer to William Graham Sumner, GB Shaw, TR, HG Wells, Sanger, Stopes, and even Hitler, I despair of it having any real meaning. But I think it does, if only because all those people saw something in Darwin, as did there enemies (well, maybe not Hitler, who wasn’t really an intellectual, though I think his reading may have been wide, if narrow and wacky). Something in his writings, or something people thought was in there, struck some chord. Even if they were wrong it’s significant.
“I do not venerate Darwin, nor draw wildly extravagant philosophical extrapolations based upon his theory”
Nor do evolutionary biologists, nor presumably any actual scientists who make scientific use of evolution. Popularizers may do so, and thereby confuse the opponents of scientific evolution. But said opponents are wrong if they think they can make headway against scientific evolution, which is encapsulated in the theory of natural selection, by descrediting the extra-scientific implications of big “e” evolution.
It is surprising how many people are unaware that Darwin’s real scientific claim to fame is natural and sexual selection. The sweeping story of macroevolution and missing links get all the press. Variability of inheritable traits is relatively (not in an Einsteinian sense) boring. I usually try to explain Darwin’s importance by explaining how he came up with all that without having heard genes, nor with the benefit of the first thing we learn about in junior high-level biology, which is Mendel’s dominant and recessive pea traits theory.
Darwin had plenty of forerunners, most importantly perhaps Malthus. But to have your theory confirmed almost a century later by the time we discover DNA, wow. That’s a one in a billion idea.