Patrick Matthew and Natural Selection: Nineteenth Century Gentleman-Farmer, Naturalist and Writer. W. J. Dempster

Isis ◽  
1984 ◽  
Vol 75 (4) ◽  
pp. 766-767
Author(s):  
Charles C. Gillispie
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Natural Selection

Mind

On Purpose ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 166-194
Author(s):  
Michael Ruse
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Natural Selection ◽  
William James ◽  
Thomas Hardy ◽  
Theory Of Knowledge ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Origin Of Species ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Established Church

This chapter focuses on the writer Thomas Hardy who was raised a good Christian, a member of the established church. Then he read The Origin of Species and it all came crashing down. His poem “Hap,” written in 1866, tells it all, implying that God does not exist but that with his going, humans lose all meaning to life. The chapter also discusses crucial issues about how philosophers handled mind and meaning, about knowledge and morality. Not just the nonexistence of God— agnosticism or atheism pretty much became the norm in the profession—but the lack of meaning. The American pragmatists rode with things pretty well. Whether this was part of the general, late-nineteenth-century American vigor and rise to prominence and power, they found the challenge of Darwinism stimulating and thought provoking. For someone like William James, the struggle for existence and natural selection translated readily into a theory of knowledge—ideas fight it out just as organisms fight it out.

Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 196-201
Author(s):  
Bill Jenkins
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Natural Selection ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Theory Of Evolution ◽  
Evolutionary Theories

In this final chapter the various threads of the argument for the importance of Edinburgh as a centre for the elaboration and transmission of evolutionary theories in the early nineteenth century are drawn together. It argues for the importance of Edinburgh as a conduit for the transmission of evolutionary ideas into Great Britain, where they would influence both the development and the reception of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by means of natural selection.

The Time Revolutionaries of 1859

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-40
Author(s):  
Clive Gamble
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Natural Selection ◽  
Water Supply ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
Freezing Time ◽  
Adam Bede ◽  
Self Help ◽  
Unlimited Time ◽  
Conflicting Interests

The three principals, their partners, families, and networks are introduced. The chapter uses Darwin’s explanation of natural selection in 1857: ‘We have almost unlimited time; no-one but a practical geologist can fully appreciate this.’ Evans, Lubbock, and Prestwich were all practical geologists but with conflicting interests in managing London’s water supply for health and business. The chapter explores their geological passion and how they came to investigate the question of great human antiquity—the crux of the time revolution. The idea of using stone tools as a proxy for remote human ancestors is examined and the challenges which faced them set out. The characters of the principals are mapped onto the ideals in Samuel Smiles’s Self-Help, where zeal and perseverance sum up the qualities of success in all walks of life. George Eliot’s observations in Adam Bede on the men of New Leisure provides another fit for the three time revolutionaries. The preoccupation of the mid-nineteenth century with time is also examined using three inventions, the railways and railway time, shrinking distance—and hence time—by telegraphy, and freezing time with photographs. Examples range across literature and engineering.

‘Hurrah for the missing link!’: a history of apes, ancestors and a crucial piece of evidence

2011 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter C. Kjærgaard
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Natural Selection ◽  
Human Evolution ◽  
Fossil Record ◽  
Animal Kingdom ◽  
Missing Link ◽  
Origin Of Species ◽  
Theory Of Evolution ◽  
History Of ◽  
Evolution By Natural Selection

In the nineteenth century the idea of a ‘missing link’ connecting humans with the rest of the animal kingdom was eagerly embraced by professional scientists and popularizers. After the publication of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859, many tied the idea and subsequent search for a crucial piece of evidence to Darwin and his formulation of the theory of evolution by natural selection. This article demonstrates that the expression was widely used and that the framework for discussions about human's relation to the apes and gaps in the fossil record were well in place and widely debated long before Origin of Species became the standard reference for discussing human evolution. In the second half of the century the missing link gradually became the ultimate prize in palaeoanthropology and grew into one of the most powerful, celebrated and criticized icons of human evolution.

Alfred Russel Wallace, Robert Owen and the theory of natural selection

2002 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
GRETA JONES
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Natural Selection ◽  
Social Context ◽  
Human Behaviour ◽  
Human Society ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Alfred Russel Wallace ◽  
The Social ◽  
Considerable Debate

Whereas there has been considerable debate about the social context of Darwin's theory of natural selection, much less focus has been placed upon Alfred Russel Wallace. This article looks at Wallace's socialism and, in particular, the influence upon his thought of the early nineteenth-century socialist Robert Owen. It argues that a case can be made for seeing Wallace's thought about nature and natural selection in the years up to 1858 in the context of Owenism. Three aspects of his thought are singled out for examination. These are, first, Wallace's views on the role of instinct in animal and human behaviour; second, the idea of colonization in human society and in nature; and third, a re-examination of the role of Malthus in Wallace's thought, emphasizing the influence upon him of the early nineteenth-century socialist critique of Malthusianism.

Planetary History, Wallace, and Natural Selection

2012 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael A. Flannery
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Natural Selection ◽  
Carbon Footprint ◽  
Primary Data ◽  
Ecological Degradation ◽  
Alfred Russel Wallace ◽  
Century Idea

Concerns about the anthropogenic ecological degradation of the planet—deforestation, species endangerment, pollution, and an increasing carbon footprint—have prompted numerous studies calling for wide-ranging, comprehensive global programs. In this regard, Tim Flannery's effort in Here on Earth to enlist Alfred Russel Wallace, a nineteenth-century naturalist, in the service of a twentieth-century idea falls prey to presentism on the grounds of a conceptual misunderstanding and incomplete or interpolated primary data.

The Act or Process of Dying Out: The Importance of Darwinian Extinction in Argentine Culture

2009 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adriana Novoa
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Natural Selection ◽  
Process Variation ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Intellectual Elites

ArgumentThe spread of Darwinian ideas by the late nineteenth century in Argentina transformed the intellectual elites' notion of progress and civilization. While before Darwin, union, harmony, and assimilation were the ideas most commonly associated with the civilizatory process; variation, struggle, and divergence dominated the post-Darwin discussion. More importantly, unlike in Europe, in Argentina the theory not only triggered interest in the process of speciation, but also its relationship with extinction. Extinction became the benchmark of progress, and the sign of success for the nation. If the country was civilizing itself, the “natural” elimination of inferior individuals, unfit for the struggle for existence, had to be proved and displayed. The origin of modernity was here associated with the existence of evolutionary waste that revealed the work of natural selection on behalf of national improvement.

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