From what I have read about the history of science and philosophy, there were some philosophers in the 19th century who hoped to put morals on a scientific basis. Herbert Spencer, for example, wrote a three-volume treatise on ethics in which he hoped to do just that. He claimed that his "ultimate purpose, lying behind all proximate purposes, has been that of finding for the principles of right and wrong in conduct at large, a scientific basis." As an evolutionist, Spencer thought that his law of evolution could supply a basis for ethics.

But Spencer and others who tried to create an evolutionary ethics were roundly criticized by the first Henry Sidgwick at Cambridge and by another Cambridge philosopher named William Sorley.

The bottom line is that the idea that science, including the theory of social evolution, could provide us with a basis for ethical principles was rejected by most Anglo-American philosophers. It was also rejected by leading social scientists like Max Weber in Germany.