scholarly journals Descent of Darwin: race, sex, and human nature

BJHS Themes ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Erika Lorraine Milam ◽  
Suman Seth
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Women's Education ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Aesthetic Judgement ◽  
Origin Of Species ◽  
Biological Importance ◽  
Women's Equality ◽  
History Of ◽  
Descent Of Man

Abstract In 1871, Charles Darwin published Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, a text that extended, elaborated and completed his On the Origin of Species (1859). When he had published Origin, Darwin sought, albeit unsuccessfully, to skirt controversy; in Descent he waded into the fray on near-innumerable issues. Readers could find explicit the claim that humans had descended from apes, in addition to explorations of the similarities and apparent gulfs between ‘man’ and other animals. They also found Darwin's opinions on issues ranging from the origin and hierarchy of races to the question of women's education, from the source of altruistic bravery to the biological importance of aesthetic judgement, from his views on what his cousin would term ‘eugenics’ to the history of monogamy. In the last 150 years these ideas have been variously contested, rejected and recovered, so that the shadow of Descent extended into debates over the development of languages, the evolution of human sexualities, the ongoing possibilities of eugenics and the question of women's equality. In this volume, appearing during the sesquicentennial of the text's first appearance, one finds papers dedicated to all of these themes and more, laying out the roots and fruits of Darwin's Descent.

scholarly journals ‘Constitutions selection’: Darwin, race and medicine

BJHS Themes ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Suman Seth
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Skin Colour ◽  
Race Science ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Race ◽  
Descent Of Man

Abstract In the course of his discussion of the origin of variations in skin colour among humans in the Descent of Man, Charles Darwin suggested that darker skin might be correlated with immunity to certain diseases. To make that suggestion, he drew upon a claim that seemed self-evidently correct in 1871, although it had seemed almost certainly incorrect in the late eighteenth century: that immunity to disease could be understood as a hereditary racial trait. This paper aims to show how fundamental was the idea of ‘constitutions selection’, as Darwin would call it, for his thinking about human races, tracking his (ultimately unsuccessful) attempts to find proof of its operation over a period of more than thirty years. At the same time and more broadly, following Darwin's conceptual resources on this question helps explicate relationships between conceptions of disease and conceptions of race in the nineteenth century. That period saw the birth of a modern, fixist, biologically determinist racism, which increasingly manifested itself in medical writings. The reverse was also true: medicine was a crucial site in which race was forged. The history of what has been called ‘race-science’, it is argued, cannot and should not be written independent of the history of ‘race-medicine’.

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.

scholarly journals Henrique Vaz, Darwin and Cassirer: Being Human and Transcendence

Open Theology ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 258-267
Author(s):  
Agnaldo Portugal
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Human Species ◽  
Ernst Cassirer ◽  
Biological Approach ◽  
Culture Centered ◽  
Descent Of Man

Abstract This article compares the approach of the Brazilian philosopher Henrique Vaz to the ones of Charles Darwin and Ernst Cassirer about human nature. Firstly, the text expounds Darwin’s ideas about human species in his The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871), showing how the strictly biological approach is insightful in many respects, but becomes insufficient to understand humans in some other important points. Secondly, the article argues that those insufficiencies of Darwin’s theory may be overcome by the culture centered understanding of the human phenomenon held by Ernst Cassirer. Some other inadequacies are shown in Cassirer’s account, however, which can be resolved - preserving the virtues of both his and Darwin’s theories - by Henrique Vaz’s dialectic conception of humans as beings towards transcendence.

The Science of Sympathy

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rob Boddice
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Moral Economy ◽  
Upper Class ◽  
Medical Progress ◽  
Compulsory Vaccination ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Research ◽  
Descent Of Man ◽  
Civilized Society

In his Descent of Man, Charles Darwin placed sympathy at the crux of morality in civilized society. His idea buttressed the belief that white, upper-class, educated men deserved their sense of superiority by virtue of good breeding. It also implied that progress could be steered by envisioning a new blueprint for sympathy that redefined moral actions carried out in sympathy's name. Rob Boddice joins a daring intellectual history of sympathy to a portrait of how the first Darwinists defined and employed it. Combining the history of emotions, the history of medicine, the history of science and the history of morality, Boddice shows how specific interpretations of Darwinism sparked a cacophonous discourse intent on displacing previous notions of sympathy. Scientific and medical progress demanded that "cruel" practices like vivisection, an essential part of new research in physiology, and compulsory vaccination be seen as moral for their ultimate goal of alleviating suffering. Some even saw the so-called unfit--natural targets of sympathy--as a danger to society and encouraged sympathy for the "fit" alone, placing this emotion at the heart of eugenics. Right or wrong, these early Darwinists formed a moral economy that acted on a new system of ethics, reconceptualised obligations, and executed new duties. Boddice persuasively argues that the bizarre, even dangerous formulations of sympathy they invented influence society and civilization in the present day.

scholarly journals Charles Darwin i dansk litteratur med særlig henblik på Johannes V. Jensens forfatterskab

2016 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 183-200
Author(s):  
Sven Hakon Rossel
Keyword(s):  
Role Model ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Literary Text ◽  
Positive Role ◽  
Philosophical Debate ◽  
Origin Of Species ◽  
Positive Role Model ◽  
Nobel Prizewinner ◽  
Descent Of Man

Abstract Charles Darwin’s theories were already introduced in Scandinavia in the early 1860s, whereas his two major works, On the Origin of Species (1859) and The Descent of Man (1871), were translated by Danish writer J.P. Jacobsen in the 1870s. Jacobsen acts as an important intermediary both as a scientist and, probably, the first Danish writer whose work is influenced by Darwin’s thoughts. But also in the writings of other authors of the time, e.g. Herman Bang, at least the name “Darwin” infrequently occurs as is also the case with the symbolist writers of the 1890s, e.g. Viggo Stuckenberg and Sophus Claussen. However, not until after 1900 does Darwin serve as an artistic inspiration and a positive role model. This happens in an overpowering manner in the fictional and essayist works of the Danish Nobel Prizewinner Johannes V. Jensen. Jensen’s Darwinism was not countered until the so-called “livsanskuelsesdebat” - a philosophical debate - during the 1920s with the eloquent poet and dramatist Helge Rode as his acute opponent. Hereafter, Darwin’s role in Danish literature decreases significantly unless one wishes to see Peter Høeg’s novel from 1996, Kvinden og aben (The Man and the Ape) as the last example of a Darwin-influence on a literary text.

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.

Evolutionary Ethics: Healthy Prospect or Last Infirmity?

1988 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 27-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Ruse
Keyword(s):  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Evolutionary Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
Evolutionary Ethics ◽  
Evolutionary Approach ◽  
Origin Of Species ◽  
Herbert Spencer ◽  
Adequate Understanding ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
Descent Of Man

Evolutionary ethics, the idea that the evolutionary process contains the basis for a full and adequate understanding of human moral nature, is an old and disreputable notion. It was popularized in the 19th century by the English general man of science, Herbert Spencer, who began advocating an evolutionary approach to ethical understanding, even before Charles Darwin published his Origin of Species in 1859 (Spencer 1857, 1892). Although it was never regarded with much enthusiasm by professional philosophers, thanks to Spencer’s advocacy the evolutionary approach to ethics soon gained wide popularity, both in Britain and towards the end of the century, even more in the United States of America (Ruse 1986; Russett 1976). It became transformed into a whole sociopolitical doctrine, known somewhat inaccurately as ‘Social Darwinism.’ (Scholars have long debated as to whether Darwin himself was truly a Social Darwinian, and the answer seems to depend on which of his works you read. If you look at the Origin of Species, he certainly is not. On the other hand, if you look at the Descent of Man, there are good reasons for thinking that he was not unsympathetic to the idea.

Reevaluating Female “Inferiority”: Sarah Grand Versus Charles Darwin

1998 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-236 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Biological Determinism ◽  
Origin Of Species ◽  
Sarah Grand ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
Descent Of Man

The figure of darwin hovered like a specter over the fin de siècle, not only the Darwin of the explosive 1859 On the Origin of Species that redirected evolutionary thinking but also the author of the 1871 Descent of Man — a less heralded work, though generating equally significant repercussions with its pronouncements on the intellectual capacities of the sexes. By linking a perceived mental inferiority of women to the mechanism of evolution, Darwin seemingly brought scientific proof to support a cultural truism. In so doing, he reinforced Victorian strictures that maintained women in a subservient state, which now could be justified on the basis of biological determinism. Yet Sarah Grand's popular 1897 novel, The Beth Book, contests the Darwinian verities, questioning the scientists' specious conclusions about sex-linked traits and identifying culture as an equally significant force determining the mental dispositions of the sexes.

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