scholarly journals The evolving spirit: morals and mutualism in Arabella Buckley's evolutionary epic

2017 ◽  
Vol 71 (4) ◽  
pp. 385-408
Author(s):  
Jordan Larsen
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Darwinian Evolution ◽  
Natural Origin ◽  
Evolution Of Morality ◽  
Alfred Russel Wallace

Contemporaries of Charles Darwin were divided on reconciling his theory of natural selection with religion and morality. Although Alfred Russel Wallace stands out as a spiritualist advocate of natural selection who rejected a natural origin of morality, the science popularizer and spiritualist Arabella Buckley (1840–1929) offers a more representative example of how theists, whether spiritualist or more orthodox in their religion, found reconciliation. Unlike Wallace, Buckley emphasized the lawful evolution of morality and of the soul, drawing from the theological tradition of traducianism. Significantly, Buckley argued for a mutualistic and deeply theistic interpretation of Darwinian evolution, particularly the evolution of morals, without sacrificing the uniformity of natural law. Though Buckley's understanding of the evolutionary epic has been represented as emphasizing mutualism (Gates 1998) and spiritualist theology (Lightman 2007), here I demonstrate that her distinctive addition to the debate lies in her unifying theory of traducianism. In contrast to other authors, I argue that through Buckley we better understand Victorian spiritualism as more of a religion than an occult science. However, it was a conception of religion that, through her evolutionary traducianism, bridged science and spiritualism. This offers historians a more complex but satisfying image of the Victorian worldview after Darwin.

Evolution: A Very Short Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Charlesworth ◽  
Deborah Charlesworth
Keyword(s):  
New Species ◽  
Natural Selection ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Short Introduction ◽  
Alfred Russel Wallace ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Living Species ◽  
Evolution By Natural Selection ◽  
Special Creation

Less than 150 years ago, the view that living species were the result of special creation by God was still dominant. The recognition by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace of the mechanism of evolution by natural selection has completely transformed our understanding of the living world, including our own origins. Evolution: A Very Short Introduction provides a summary of the process of evolution by natural selection, highlighting the wide range of evidence, and explains how natural selection gives rise to adaptations and eventually, over many generations, to new species. It introduces the central concepts of the field of evolutionary biology and discusses some of the remaining questions regarding evolutionary processes.

Human Evolution

On Purpose ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 153-165
Author(s):  
Michael Ruse
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Selection ◽  
Natural Selection ◽  
Human Evolution ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Darwinian Evolution ◽  
Close Relatives

This chapter analyzes Darwinian evolution through selection. It explores what the Kantian/Darwinian perspective implies for humans. Charles Darwin was absolutely convinced of the fact of human evolution and as soon as he had discovered natural selection was applying it to species, to minds and powers of thought no less. However, in the Origin he was cautious, wanting first to get the main details of his theory laid out for all to see and only at the end pointing to the implications for humankind. This did not stop others from getting on the bandwagon, and although in the Descent Darwin had much to say that was both new and interesting—notably about sexual selection—by then he was entering an already well-plowed field. Naturally, the early parts of Darwin's book were concerned with making the straightforward case for human evolution, showing how it is reasonable to think—especially on the evidence of homologies—that people and the higher apes are close relatives and that humans came jointly from organisms more primitive.

Alfred Russel Wallace, F. R. S., and his essays of 1858 and 1855

1959 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-84 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Great Problem ◽  
Origin Of Species ◽  
Critical Moment ◽  
Alfred Russel Wallace ◽  
Family Tradition ◽  
College Training ◽  
The Future

IN 1858 Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Darwin jointly and independently stated the principle of natural selection, and in 1859 Darwin published the Origin of species. In this essay I want to discuss the part played by Alfred Wallace in that great event: was he no more than a catalyst for Darwin, applied at a critical moment of his career? I shall try to show how much more than that he was and, up to a point, how similarly they pursued their great problem. That is the more remarkable because it would be hard to choose men more unlike in character than these two. Charles Darwin came of well-to-do parentage with a strong family tradition both to support and to bind him. His dominant father moulded the future pattern of his life. He went through the school and college training of a young gentleman for whom it seemed difficult to find a satisfactory calling. But all his life he was a man of property, and continued so through his common sense and his financial sagacity.

The letters between James Lamont and Charles Darwin on Arctic fauna

Polar Record ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 51 (5) ◽  
pp. 492-500 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Leah Devlin
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Polar Bear ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Origin Of Species ◽  
Linnean Society ◽  
Alfred Russel Wallace ◽  
Natural Means ◽  
Arctic Fauna

ABSTRACTIn the summers of 1858 and 1859, the Scot Sir James Lamont of Knockdow embarked on two cruises to Svalbard (referred to by Lamont as Spitzbergen [sic]) to hunt, make geographical surveys, and collect geological and biological specimens. Lamont's return from these voyages coincided with the publication of the joint Charles Darwin-Alfred Russel Wallace paper, ‘On the tendency of species to form varieties; on the perpetuation of varieties and species by natural means of selection’ by the Linnean Society in August 1858 and, a year later, the publication of Darwin's On the origin of species (Darwin 1958). Profoundly influenced by Darwin's ideas, Lamont initiated a correspondence with the naturalist, relating examples of what he considered to be natural selection, observed during his hunting expeditions. In his Svalbard travelogue, Seasons with the sea-horses (1861), Lamont expounded specifically upon walrus and polar bear evolution, ideas inspired by sporadic yet encouraging letters from the renowned naturalist.

The First Darwinian: Alfred Russel Wallace and the Meaning of Darwinism

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-184
Author(s):  
Ian Hesketh
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Initial Study ◽  
Darwinian Evolution ◽  
Periodical Press ◽  
Alfred Russel Wallace ◽  
Evolutionary Naturalism ◽  
Victorian Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
Evolution By Natural Selection

Abstract This essay is an initial study of a larger project that seeks to produce a history of the term ‘Darwinism’. While it is generally well-known that Darwinism could refer to a variety of different things in the Victorian period, from a general evolutionary naturalism to the particular theory of natural selection, very little has been written about the history of the term or how it was contested at given times and places. Building on James Moore’s 1991 sketch of the history of Darwinism in the 1860s, this paper specifically seeks to situate Alfred Russel Wallace’s 1889 book Darwinism in the context of a larger struggle over Darwin’s legacy in the 1880s. It is argued that Wallace used his authority as one of the founders of evolution by natural selection to reimagine what he called ‘pure Darwinism’ as a teleological evolutionism, one that integrated the theory of natural selection with an interpretation of spirit phenomena thereby producing a more agreeable and holistic account of life than was previously associated with Darwinian evolution. By considering the reception of Wallace’s Darwinism in the periodical press it will be argued further that Wallace’s interpretation of Darwinism was generally well received, which suggests that our understanding of what Darwinism meant in the late Victorian period needs to be revisited.

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.

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