scholarly journals DEMPSTER, W.J. Evolutionary concepts in the nineteenth century: natural selection and Patrick Matthew. Pentland Press, Bishop Auckland: 1996. Pp xv + 365. Price –12.50(pb.) ISBN 1-85821-356-8.

1998 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 295-295
Author(s):  
A.L. PANCHEN
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Natural Selection ◽  
Evolutionary Concepts

Darwin's ““Imaginary Illustrations””: Creatively Teaching Evolutionary Concepts & the Nature of Science

2010 ◽  
Vol 72 (2) ◽  
pp. 82-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan C. Love
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Nature Of Science ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Evolutionary Change ◽  
Evolutionary Concepts

An overlooked feature of Darwin's work is his use of ““imaginary illustrations”” to show that natural selection is competent to produce adaptive, evolutionary change. When set in the context of Darwin's methodology, these thought experiments provide a novel way to teach natural selection and the nature of science.

Development and Adaptation: Evolutionary Concepts in British Morphology, 1870–1914

1989 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 283-297 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter J. Bowler
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Implications ◽  
Cultural Environment ◽  
Evolutionary Morphology ◽  
Previous Generation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Eugenics Movement ◽  
Evolutionary Concepts

Bernard Norton's research concentrated on the Biometrical school of Darwinism and the social implications of the hereditarian ideas that began to gain popularity in the closing years of the nineteenth century. In this article I want to look at the previous generation of evolutionists, the evolutionary morphologists against whom the Biometricians (and their great rivals, the early Mendelians) were reacting. Despite the prominence of evolutionary morphology in the post-Darwinian era, comparatively little historical work has been done on it. In helping to fill this gap, I hope to honour Bernard Norton's memory by throwing light on a movement that forms a conceptual bridge linking the original Darwinian debate to the Biometrical – Mendelian controversy. I shall also argue that evolutionary morphology had ideological overtones that helped to shape the cultural environment within which the eugenics movement would emerge. Although originally a product of the Victorian faith in progress, evolutionary morphology seemed to confirm that exposure to an unstimulating environment led to degeneration. It thus fuelled the concern over racial degeneration which the supporters of eugenics would seek to allay through the application of their new hereditarian philosophy.

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.

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