Darwin and His Critics: The Reception of Darwin's Theory of Evolution by the Scientific Community. David Hull

1975 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 338-339
Author(s):  
Michael Ruse
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Community ◽  
Theory Of Evolution ◽  
David Hull

Darwinian Evolutionary Theory

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Ruse
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Selection ◽  
Natural Selection ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Origin Of Species ◽  
Theory Of Evolution ◽  
Descent Of Man

Charles Robert Darwin, the English naturalist, published On the Origin of Species in 1859 and the follow-up work The Descent of Man in 1871. In these works, he argued for his theory of evolution through natural selection, applying it to all organisms, living and dead, including our own species, Homo sapiens. Although controversial from the start, Darwin’s thinking was deeply embedded in the culture of his day, that of a middle-class Englishman. Evolution as such was an immediate success in scientific circles, but although the mechanism of selection had supporters in the scientific community (especially among those working with fast-breeding organisms), its real success was in the popular domain. Natural selection, and particularly the side mechanism of sexual selection, were known to all and popular themes in fiction and elsewhere.

Why Buy That Theory?

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roald Hoffmann
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Community ◽  
Physical Phenomenon ◽  
Platonic Solid ◽  
Orbital Symmetry ◽  
Theory Of Evolution ◽  
Simple Theories ◽  
Sigmatropic Shift ◽  
The World ◽  
One Step ◽  
Synthetic Chemist

The theory of theories goes like this: A theory will be accepted by a scientific community if it explains better (or more of) what is known, fits at its fringes with what is known in other parts of our universe, and makes verifiable, preferably risky, predictions. Sometimes it does go like that. So the theory that made my name (and added to the already recognized greatness of the man with whom I collaborated, the synthetic chemist of the 20th century, R. B. Woodward) did make sense of many disparate and puzzling observations in organic chemistry. And “orbital symmetry control,” as our complex of ideas came to be called, made some risky predictions. I remember well the day that Jerry Berson sent us his remarkable experimental results on the stereochemistry of the so- called 1,3-sigmatropic shift . It should proceed in a certain way, he reasoned from our theory—a non-intuitive way. And it did. But much that goes into the acceptance of theories has little to do with rationalization and prediction. Instead, I will claim, what matters is a heady mix of factors in which psychological attitudes figure prominently. A simple equation describing a physical phenomenon (better still, many), the molecule shaped like a Platonic solid with regular geometry, the simple mechanism (A→B, in one step)—these have tremendous aesthetic appeal, a direct beeline into our soul. They are beautifully simple, and simply beautiful. Theories of this type are awesome in the original sense of the word—who would deny this of the theory of evolution, the Dirac equation or general relativity? A little caution might be suggested from pondering the fact that political ads patently cater to our psychobiological predilection for simplicity. Is the world simple? Or do we just want it to be such? In the dreams of some, the beauty and simplicity of equations becomes a criterion for their truth. Simple theories seem to validate that idol of science, Ockham’s Razor. In preaching the poetic conciseness and generality of orbital explanations, I have succumbed to this, too.

Mendeleev

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Scerri
Keyword(s):  
Periodic System ◽  
Chemical Element ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
Adult Life ◽  
Oil Industry ◽  
Theory Of Relativity ◽  
Theory Of Evolution ◽  
Weights And Measures ◽  
The One ◽  
Applied Fields

Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev is the undisputed champion of the periodic system in at least two senses. First of all, he is by far the leading discoverer of the system. Although he was not the first to develop a periodic system, his version is the one that created the biggest impact on the scientific community at the time it was introduced and thereafter. His name is invariably and justifiably connected with the periodic system, to the same extent perhaps as Darwin’s name is synonymous with the theory of evolution and Einstein’s with the theory of relativity. Although it may be possible to quibble about certain priority aspects of his contributions, there is no denying that Mendeleev was also the champion of the periodic system in the literal sense of propagating the system, defending its validity, and devoting time to its elaboration. As discussed in chapter 3, there were others who produced significant work on the system, but many of them, such as Alexandre-Émile Béguyer De Chancourtois, William Odling, and Gustavus Hinrichs, moved on to other scientific endeavors. After publishing their initial ideas, these contributors devoted their attention to other fields and never seriously returned to the periodic system to examine its full consequences to the extent that Mendeleev did. This is not to suggest that Mendeleev himself worked only on the periodic system. He is also known for many other scientific contributions, as well as for working in several applied fields, such as the Russian oil industry and as the director of the Russian institute for weights and measures. But the periodic system remained Mendeleev’s pride and joy throughout his adult life. Even toward the end of his life he published an intriguing essay in which he returned to the periodic system and, among other speculations, attempted to place the physicist’s ether within the periodic system as a chemical element. Much has been written on Mendeleev, and it would be impossible to do justice to his contributions in the space of a few pages.

scholarly journals Victorian Poets and the Changing Bible

AmeriQuests ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (1-2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Evan Jehl
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
Victorian Poetry ◽  
Victorian Culture ◽  
University Of Washington ◽  
Theory Of Evolution ◽  
Creation Myth ◽  
The Creation

This book review examines University of Washington professor Charles LaPorte's most recent work, Victorian Poets and the Changing Bible. LaPorte attempts to revise the model conventionally attributed to Victorian poetry as merely a product of Victorian culture. The chaste conservatism and religious dogmatism of Victorian culture may have been a reactionary attempt to salvage faith in the wake of doubt among the scientific community and even various disciplines of the humanities (most notably, finding the creation myth incompatible with Darwin's theory of evolution, and the biblical accounts generally spurious in terms of historicity). Through an examination of the life and works of the Brownings, Tennyson, Clough, and Eliot, LaPorte argues that Victorian poetry actually embraced this doubt as the prospect for an open canon to which inspired poets could contribute new scriptures.

Teilhard and Orthogenetic Evolution

1967 ◽  
Vol 60 (3) ◽  
pp. 281-295 ◽  
Author(s):  
George B. Murray
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Community ◽  
Great Majority ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Other ◽  
Conservative Estimate ◽  
Two Cultures ◽  
Theory Of Evolution ◽  
Cultural Lag ◽  
Theodosius Dobzhansky ◽  
The Two Cultures

The number of writings appearing on Teilhard de Chardin is increasing daily, with the great majority of them treating his philosophical, theological or humanistic ideas. Discussion of his evolutionary theory from a more scientific point of view is relatively rare. For one thing, he seems to have leaned heavily, though not exclusively, on a neo-Lamarckian explanatory viewpoint. The major problem, however, is that he espoused a theory of evolution, orthogenesis, which is rejected by the majority of scientists today on the ground that there is no evidence for it. Many writers force one to conclude that they are unaware of the ramifications of holding a theory that is considered unviable in the scientific community. In the same vein, too many authors do not seem to take seriously the critics of Teilhard who have made this point, e.g., George G. Simpson, Peter Medawar and Theodosius Dobzhansky. One gets the impression that there is a wider gulf between “the two cultures” than he might have imagined. Little concern for Teilhard's orthogenetic evolution leads us to suspect that writers do not know that it makes a difference what type of evolution Teilhard espoused. There may be a cultural lag between science and the other disciplines, but orthogenesis has been around for many years now, and has been rejected by biologists for at least fifteen years, which is a conservative estimate.

The Paradox of Scientific Progress in the Evolutionary Dimension

2021 ◽  
pp. 83-94
Author(s):  
Alexander Yu. Antonovskiy ◽  
◽  
Raisa E. Barash ◽  
◽  
Keyword(s):  
Max Weber ◽  
External Environment ◽  
Scientific Progress ◽  
Niklas Luhmann ◽  
Scientific Theories ◽  
Value Judgments ◽  
Theory Of Evolution ◽  
Stage Of Development ◽  
David Hull ◽  
Communicative Theory

The article proposes a solution to the paradox of scientific progress, formulated by Max Weber. Science formulates true and objective judgments, and only this distinguishes it from the world of value judgments, ideology, religion, art. On the other hand, the “lifespan of truths” is extremely small and any statement about scientific progress looks unconvincing just in comparison with the pro­gress of value discourses, where each stage of development (style or work of art), if not replaced by the “best” at least they retain or even increase their value over the centuries. A way out of this paradox, according to the authors, can be offered by a socio-evolutionary interpretation of science, where the “criterion” of a better (or more grounded) theory is viewed as “fitness”, as the ability to respond to the challenge of the external environment, to which the best theory adapts bet­ter, and as a consequence is selected. The article is devoted to the problems that the biologically based general theory of evolution is facing today when it is ex­trapolated to the problem of scientific progress. The question is investigated in what sense scientific theories can be interpreted as replacing each other and competing with each other by analogy with organic formations (genotypes, phe­notypes, populations); what the external environment of scientific communica­tion is and what institutions are responsible for the selection of the best theories; about the extent to which the autonomous mechanisms of scientific evolution are differentiated, namely, the mechanisms of random variation, natural selection and stabilization of newly acquired traits. The authors analyze the solutions to these problems in the concepts of causal individuation of the scientific theories of David Hull, the concept of semantic individuation of Stephen Gould’s theory, and the possibilities of reconciliation and synthesis of these evolutionary ap­proaches in the system-communicative theory of evolution by Niklas Luhmann.

Bringing Psychoanalysis Into the Scientific Community

1983 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 285-285
Author(s):  
Seymour Fisher
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Community
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