Writing and Evolutionary Theory

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seán Hewitt
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
Natural Theology ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
Theory Of Evolution ◽  
Nature Study ◽  
The Impact

The development of evolutionary theory over the course of the 19th century was not confined to the theory of evolution by natural selection posited by Charles Darwin (b. 1809–d. 1882) and Alfred Russell Wallace (b. 1823–d. 1913). Encompassing the burgeoning science of geology, natural history, and biology and eventually being adapted into sociology, psychology, political theory, economics, and cultural anthropology, the theory of evolution quickly became both pervasive and divisive. Prior to Darwin’s intervention with the Origin of Species (1859), various theories of evolution were circulating, being accommodated within the field of natural theology or constituting a challenge to theories of intelligent design. Over the period, the interplay between literature and evolutionary theory was complex and pronounced: advances in science provoked new formal and thematic concerns for writers, and scientists used poetry and literary techniques to disseminate their arguments to wide readerships. During the period, the rise of natural historical study as a popular pursuit, and the Victorian emphasis on nature study as a moral, even religious, pursuit, meant that evolutionary ideas were adapted for various purposes and contested in both popular and specialist texts. Pre-Darwinian literature circulated evolutionary ideas mainly within the framework of natural theology (proving and discussing God’s existence through the study of Creation), but visions of harmony and beneficent design were challenged through the theory of natural selection, meaning that post-Darwinian literature more fully encompasses anthropological anxiety and the falling off of faith. Religious texts, and theological concerns, are thus central to the interplay between literature and science in the period. Toward the end of the century, the adaptation of Darwinism and evolutionary theory into various disciplines saw a proliferation of social Darwinism, branching off into eugenics, the impact of which would be felt most fully in the 20th century. This article focuses on writing and evolutionary theory in its immediate British and 19th-century contexts.

scholarly journals Christianity and Darwinism: The Journey Is More Important Than the Destination

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 124
Author(s):  
Michael Ruse
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Natural Theology ◽  
Theory Of Evolution

Does God exist? If he does, what is the evidence for this? Can one arrive at God through reason (natural theology), or is it faith or nothing (revealed theology)? I write of my lifetime of wrestling with this question. Raised a Quaker, I lost my faith at the age of 20. As an academic, I became an expert on Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution through natural selection. How can I make sense of—and how can I reconcile—these two hugely important things in my life? At the age of 80, I find myself a long-standing agnostic. This is not, as Francis Collins claims, a “cop out.” Showing my debt to my Quaker heritage, I am theologically apophatic. I can say only what I do not know. I find this quite-out-of-character modesty hugely exciting. It gives my life great meaning.

Darwin’s Impact on the Medical Sciences

2019 ◽  
pp. 171-186
Author(s):  
Fabio Zampieri
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Medical Sciences ◽  
Darwinian Revolution ◽  
Theory Of Evolution ◽  
Organic Evolution ◽  
Medical Issues ◽  
Nineteenth Century Medicine ◽  
The Impact

In early nineteenth century medicine, the concepts of organic evolution and natural selection emerged in different contexts, partly anticipating Darwinian revolution. In particular, the anatomical concept of disease favored the perception that men and animals were very similar from a morphological, physiological and pathological point of view, and that this could indicate a certain degree of kinship between them. The debate around human races and human pathological heredity saw first formulations of the principle of natural selection, even if without a full appraisal of its evolutionary implications. Charles Darwin took many inspirations from these medical theories. The impact of the theory of evolution formulated by him in 1859 was only apparently slight in medicine. It is even possible to support that evolutionary concepts contributed in a significant way to the most important medical issues, debates and new discipline in the period between 1880 and 1940.

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.

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.

2. Evolution and natural selection

2019 ◽  
pp. 9-26
Author(s):  
Samir Okasha
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Philosophical Argument ◽  
Modern Biology ◽  
Theory Of Evolution ◽  
Philosophical Significance ◽  
Argument From Design ◽  
Evolution By Natural Selection

In 1859 Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, in which he set out his theory of evolution. The book marked a turning point in our understanding of the natural world and revolutionized biology. ‘Evolution and natural selection’ outlines the theory of evolution by natural selection, explaining its unique status in biology and its philosophical significance. It considers how Darwin’s theory undermined the ‘argument from design’, a traditional philosophical argument for the existence of God; how the integration of Darwin’s theory with genetics, in the early 20th century, gave rise to neo-Darwinism; and why, despite evolutionary theory being a mainstay of modern biology, in society at large there is a marked reluctance to believe in evolution.

Darwinism

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Ruse
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Land Tenure ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
General Term ◽  
Evolutionary Change ◽  
Social Darwinism ◽  
Theory Of Evolution ◽  
Mendelian Genetics ◽  
Thomas Henry Huxley ◽  
Foundational Work

The modern usage of the term Darwinism dates from the publication of On the Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin, in which he argued for evolution through natural selection. Very soon after the appearance of the Origin (in 1859), Darwin’s great supporter Thomas Henry Huxley introduced the term Darwinism. The term—together with the related terms Darwinian and Darwinist—took root. The codiscoverer of natural selection, Alfred Russel Wallace, used the term as the title of a book expounding evolution: Darwinism: An Exposition of the Theory of Natural Selection, with Some of Its Applications. Note that there seems to be a fuzziness about the term. Some identify Darwinism with evolution through natural selection. Others suggest that the essence of Darwinism is not selection per se but change or variation. Late in the 19th century, George Romanes coined the term neo-Darwinism to cover those for whom natural selection is basically the only significant cause of change. In 1930 Ronald A. Fisher, in his Genetical Theory of Natural Selection, argued that the newly developed theory of Mendelian genetics offered the required foundation for a perspective that made natural selection the central force of evolutionary change. Although the British were happy to call the Darwin-Mendel synthesis neo-Darwinism, in America the synthesis was known as the synthetic theory of evolution. This reflects that in the New World it was Sewall Wright who did the foundational work in bringing Mendelian genetics into the evolutionary picture and that he never thought of natural selection as being the force that Fisher took it to be. For Wright and his followers, especially Theodosius Dobzhansky, genetic drift was always a major component of the evolutionary picture, and as Fisher pointed out nonstop, this is about as non-Darwinian a notion as it is possible to have. By 1959 professional evolutionists (on both sides of the Atlantic) agreed that Darwin had been right about natural selection: it is the major cause of evolutionary change. Neo-Darwinism fell into disuse, as everyone now used the term Darwinism for evolution through natural selection. Mention should also be made of so-called social Darwinism, the application of Darwinism to persons and groups within society. The earliest use apparently was during Darwin’s own lifetime, by a historian discussing land tenure in Ireland. However, it was not a popular or general term, coming into widespread use only in the 1940s, with the publication of the American historian Richard Hofstadter’s book Social Darwinism in American Thought.

Joseph Dalton Hooker, F. R. S. (1817-1911)

1959 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-120
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Major Part ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Plant Taxonomy ◽  
Theory Of Evolution ◽  
General Acceptance ◽  
Long Period ◽  
Varying Length ◽  
Joseph Dalton Hooker ◽  
Living Material

Joseph Dalton Hooker was eight years the junior of Charles Darwin (1809-82) and lived twenty-nine years after Darwin’s death. He was, for a long period, the personal friend of Darwin and the frank critic of many of Darwin’s researches and of the botanical aspects of Darwinian theories. Hooker was a botanist and, since he had an extensive first-hand experience of many branches of botany, above all of plant taxonomy and phytogeography, it was naturally the botanical aspects of evolutionary problems which both interested him and concerning which he was best able to help Darwin. Such help was gratefully and fully acknowledged by Darwin, as is shown by published correspondence. Numerous letters passed between Darwin and Hooker and the latter visited his friend at Down and stayed there for periods of varying length. A considerable amount of living material was obviously supplied from Kew for the later botanical experiments Darwin carried out at Down. The assistance given by Hooker in the accumulation of facts and in criticism of theories preparatory to the publication of the Origin of species and later works of Darwin, his presenting (with Lyell) and reading Darwin’s communication to the Linnean Society of London on 1 July 1858 introducing the theory of natural selection, and his influence in gaining the speedy general acceptance of the theory of evolution are well known and it is not necessary to consider them here in much detail. It is proposed, instead, to outline very briefly the salient facts in the life of J.D. Hooker and then to devote the major part of this essay to a consideration of the development of his views on the problems of species, phytogeography, and evolution. In part at least, this means considering the influence of Darwin on Hooker but, from a wider viewpoint, it is possible to form some conception of the clarifying and unifying effects of the acceptance of the general theory of evolution on biological thought.

scholarly journals GLOBALISM OF EVOLUTIONISM

2020 ◽  
Vol 56 (S2) ◽  
pp. 115-136
Author(s):  
Bernard Hałaczek
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Evolutionary Psychology ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Theory Of Evolution ◽  
Scientific Disciplines ◽  
Mental Abilities ◽  
Human Desire ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
Social Behaviours

The phenomenon of globalization, which is well known in the economy, can nowadays be observed also in the area of science. It is based on the fact that more and more scientific disciplines are applying the same explanatory principle, namely the theory of evolution. Therefore, every development, including that of man, according to the pattern of genetic reproduction, takes place on the basis of natural selection. With psychological properties, mental abilities and social behaviours, which are eloquently referred to as “memes”, it is as with genes: only those that are better, stronger, more capable of surviving will survive after accidental changes and only they will be passed on. In short, reproduction regulates and controls human behaviour. Such a way of thinking and explanation can be found today in many publications on sociobiology and evolutionary psychology. Even if they present many new details, they pay tribute to the old human desire to explain everything in a simple way, according to the same scheme. The same expectation towards science was expressed by E. Haeckel in the 19th century and J. Monod in the 20th century. However, when these two biologists explained man as a whole based on the theory of evolution, they admitted that they referred to philosophy, to which contemporary representatives of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology cannot or do not want to confess.

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