scholarly journals Darwin's Argument by Analogy

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger M. White ◽  
M.J.S. Hodge ◽  
Gregory Radick
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Artificial Selection ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Origin Of Species ◽  
Intellectual Traditions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Analogical Argument ◽  
Argument By Analogy

In On the Origin of Species (1859), Charles Darwin put forward his theory of natural selection. Conventionally, Darwin's argument for this theory has been understood as based on an analogy with artificial selection. But there has been no consensus on how, exactly, this analogical argument is supposed to work – and some suspicion too that analogical arguments on the whole are embarrassingly weak. Drawing on new insights into the history of analogical argumentation from the ancient Greeks onward, as well as on in-depth studies of Darwin's public and private writings, this book offers an original perspective on Darwin's argument, restoring to view the intellectual traditions which Darwin took for granted in arguing as he did. From this perspective come new appreciations not only of Darwin's argument but of the metaphors based on it, the range of wider traditions the argument touched upon, and its legacies for science after the Origin.

Fatal asymmetries

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Luis Sánchez
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Artificial Selection ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Descent Of Man

Abstract In Descent of Man, Charles Darwin noted the impact of political institutions on natural selection. He thought that institutions such as asylums or hospitals may deter natural selection; however, he did not reach a decisive answer. Questions remain as to whether the selective impacts of political institutions, which in Darwin’s terms may be referred to as “artificial selection,” are compatible with natural selection, and if so, to what extent. This essay argues that currently there appears to be an essential mismatch between nature and political institutions. Unfitted institutions put exogenous and disproportionate pressures on living beings. This creates consequences for what is postulated as the condition of basic equivalence, which allows species and individuals to enjoy similar chances of survival under natural circumstances. Thus, contrary to Darwin’s expectations, it is sustained that assumed natural selection is not discouraged but becomes exacerbated by political institutions. In such conditions, selection becomes primarily artificial and perhaps mainly political, with consequences for species’ evolutionary future.

‘Short-Spanned Living Creatures’: Evolutionary Perspectives in Rhoda Broughton’s Not Wisely, but Too Well (1867)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Aaron Green
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Simple Structure ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Origin Of Species ◽  
Charles Lyell ◽  
Crystal Palace ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Evolutionary Perspectives

Abstract In Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man (1863), Charles Lyell appraised the distinct contribution made by his protégé, Charles Darwin (On the Origin of Species (1859)), to evolutionary theory: ‘Progression … is not a necessary accompaniment of variation and natural selection [… Darwin’s theory accounts] equally well for what is called degradation, or a retrogressive movement towards a simple structure’. In Rhoda Broughton’s first novel, Not Wisely, but Too Well (1867), written contemporaneously with Lyell’s book, the Crystal Palace at Sydenham prompts precisely this sort of Darwinian ambivalence to progress; but whether British civilization ‘advance[s] or retreat[s]’, her narrator adds that this prophesized state ‘will not be in our days’ – its realization exceeds the single lifespan. This article argues that Not Wisely, but Too Well is attentive to the irreconcilability of Darwinism to the Victorian ‘idea of progress’: Broughton’s novel, distinctly from its peers, raises the retrogressive and nihilistic potentials of Darwin’s theory and purposes them to reflect on the status of the individual in mid-century Britain.

Celebrating the annus mirabilis

Antiquity ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 83 (320) ◽  
pp. 458-461
Author(s):  
Christopher Evans
Keyword(s):  
Charles Darwin ◽  
History Of Archaeology ◽  
Origin Of Species ◽  
150Th Anniversary ◽  
Polite Society ◽  
History Of ◽  
Annus Mirabilis ◽  
First Time

AbstractWe are grateful to Chris Evans for convening and introducing this imaginative archaeological tribute to the work of Charles Darwin, 150 years after the publication of his On the origin of species – the inspiration for an evolutionary concept of history in so many fields. June 2009 is also the 150th anniversary of a yet more momentous event in the history of archaeology, the endorsement of the antiquity of human tool-making by observations in the Somme gravels. Clive Gamble and Robert Kruszynski reconstruct the occasion and publish the famous axe for the first time. Chris Evans returns to present us with the bitter-sweet spectacle of the Darwin family as excavators and Tim Murray rediscovers a suite of pictures made for John Lubbock which show how prehistoric life was envisaged in polite society at the time. Lastly we are grateful to Colin Renfrew for his own reflections on the anniversary.

A Genealogy of Variation

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
History Of ◽  
Evolution By Natural Selection

This chapter traces the genealogy of variation, as shaped by Charles Darwin and his legacy of evolution by natural selection. It argues that tracing the history of variation through a naturecultural framework reveals the inherent underlying logic of eugenics. A naturecultural framework allows us to see that evolutionary biologists have long wrestled with some version of what we recognize as the nature/nurture debates. Furthermore, in chronicling this history, the chapter deals with the major figures, including the four patriarchs, or fathers, of the field: Darwin, the father of evolution; Galton, the father of biometry; Malthus, the father of demography; and Mendel, the father of genetics.

Generation and the Origin of Species (1837–1937): A Historiographical Suggestion

1989 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 267-281 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. J. S. Hodge
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Heritable Variation ◽  
Origin Of Species ◽  
Research And Teaching ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Individual

Bernard Norton's friends in the history of science have had many reasons for commemorating, with admiration and affection, not only his research and teaching but no less his conversation and his company. One of his most estimable traits was his refusal to beat about the bush in raising the questions he thought worthwhile pursuing. I still remember discoursing at Pittsburgh on Darwin's route to his theory of natural selection, and being asked at the end by Bernard what were Darwin's views on heredity. I answered with the conventional waffle to the effect that the theory concerned the populational fate rather than the individual production and transmission of heritable variation, so that whatever views Darwin had on heredity had only a subsidiary place in his theorizing. Bernard was not fooled. ‘I would have thought’, he said, ‘that in order to understand anyone's theorising about evolution it would be necessary to look at his views on heredity’.

The Loss of Rational Design

2005 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 235-257
Author(s):  
Friedel Weinert
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Rational Design ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
British Association ◽  
Human Origins ◽  
Origin Of Species ◽  
Descent Of Man

Charles Darwin published hisOrigin of Specieson November 24, 1859. Whatever hurdle the theory of natural selection faced in its struggle for acceptance, its impact on human self-images was almost immediate. Well before Darwin had the chance of applying the principle of natural selection to human origins—in hisDescent of Man(1871)—his contemporaries quickly and rashly drew the inference to man's descent from the ape. Satirical magazines likePunchdelighted in depicting Darwin with his imposing head on an apish body. At the Oxford meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (June 1860), Bishop Wilberforce asked T. H. Huxley triumphantly whether he traced his ancestry to the ape on his grandfather's or grandmother's side. A wave of evolutionary texts swept over Europe (L. Biichner, E. Haeckel, T. H. Huxley, J. B. Lamarck, C. Lyell, F. Rolle, E. Tyler and K. Vogt). Written in English, French and German, they all had a common focus: the place of humans in a Darwinian world, including religion and morality.

The Loss of Rational Design

2005 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 20-21
Author(s):  
Friedel Weinert
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Rational Design ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
British Association ◽  
Human Origins ◽  
Origin Of Species ◽  
Descent Of Man

Charles Darwin published his Origin of Species on November 24, 1859. Whatever hurdle the theory of natural selection faced in its struggle for acceptance, its impact on human self-images was almost immediate. Well before Darwin had the chance of applying the principle of natural selection to human origins—in his Descent of Man (1871)—his contemporaries quickly and rashly drew the infer–ence to man’s descent from the ape. Satirical magazines like Punch delighted in depicting Darwin with his imposing head on an apish body. At the Oxford meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (June 1860), Bishop Wilberforce asked T.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document