Wikipedia/Evolutionism

Evolutionism refers to doctrines of evolution, and more specifically to a widely held 19th century belief that organisms are intrinsically bound to improve themselves, and that changes are progressive and arise through inheritance of acquired characters, as in Lamarckism. The belief was extended to include cultural evolution and social evolution. The term can be used to refer to acceptance of the modern evolutionary theory of biological evolution, and is also used in a broader sense as a world-view covering a wide variety of topics, including chemical evolution as an alternative term for abiogenesis or for nucleosynthesis of chemical elements, galaxy formation and evolution, stellar evolution, spiritual evolution, technological evolution and universal evolution which seeks to explain every aspect of this world in which we live.

"Evolutionism" is defined by the OED as "the theory of evolution, evolutionary assumptions or principles".

Development of usage
Anthropologists and biologists refer to "evolutionists" in the 19th century as those who believed that the cultures or life forms being studied are evolving to a particular form (see Platonic form). Very few scientists today, if any, believe that evolution in culture or biology works that way, and serious discussions generally take caution to distance themselves from that perspective.

Evolutionary biology explains biotic changes in terms of internal processes and gradual development as a natural progression of previously existing lifeforms. Evolution neither denies nor requires a role for divine intervention. Before the 19th century there were a number of hypotheses regarding the evolution of all material phenomena: suns, moons, planets, earth, life, civilization, and society. The number of hypotheses being propounded increased dramatically in the middle of the 19th century.

In modern times, the term evolution is widely used, but the terms evolutionism and evolutionist are rarely used in scientific circles to refer to the biological discipline. The term evolution was popularised during the 19th century by Herbert Spencer to mean cultural evolution; i.e. the increasing complexity of cultures (see History of the theory of cultural evolution) &mdash; it was only later that it acquired its biological meaning. Advocacy of such theory was called evolutionism. Some scientists object to the terms evolutionism and evolutionist because the -ism and -ist suffixes accentuate belief rather than scientific study. Conversely, creationists use those same two terms partly because the terms accentuate belief, and partly perhaps because they provide a way to package their opposition into one group, seemingly atheist and materialist, designations which are considered to be irrelevant to natural science.