scholarly journals The origin of species by means of natural selection : or The preservation of favored races in the struggle for life / by Charles Darwin.

1872 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Darwin
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Origin Of Species

‘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.

The Loss of Rational Design

2005 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 235-257
Author(s):  
Friedel Weinert
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Rational Design ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
British Association ◽  
Human Origins ◽  
Origin Of Species ◽  
Descent Of Man

Charles Darwin published hisOrigin of Specieson November 24, 1859. Whatever hurdle the theory of natural selection faced in its struggle for acceptance, its impact on human self-images was almost immediate. Well before Darwin had the chance of applying the principle of natural selection to human origins—in hisDescent of Man(1871)—his contemporaries quickly and rashly drew the inference to man's descent from the ape. Satirical magazines likePunchdelighted in depicting Darwin with his imposing head on an apish body. At the Oxford meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (June 1860), Bishop Wilberforce asked T. H. Huxley triumphantly whether he traced his ancestry to the ape on his grandfather's or grandmother's side. A wave of evolutionary texts swept over Europe (L. Biichner, E. Haeckel, T. H. Huxley, J. B. Lamarck, C. Lyell, F. Rolle, E. Tyler and K. Vogt). Written in English, French and German, they all had a common focus: the place of humans in a Darwinian world, including religion and morality.

The Loss of Rational Design

2005 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 20-21
Author(s):  
Friedel Weinert
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Rational Design ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
British Association ◽  
Human Origins ◽  
Origin Of Species ◽  
Descent Of Man

Charles Darwin published his Origin of Species on November 24, 1859. Whatever hurdle the theory of natural selection faced in its struggle for acceptance, its impact on human self-images was almost immediate. Well before Darwin had the chance of applying the principle of natural selection to human origins—in his Descent of Man (1871)—his contemporaries quickly and rashly drew the infer–ence to man’s descent from the ape. Satirical magazines like Punch delighted in depicting Darwin with his imposing head on an apish body. At the Oxford meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (June 1860), Bishop Wilberforce asked T.

Evolution by Blind Chance

1986 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 341-360
Author(s):  
Barrie Britton
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Evolutionary Process ◽  
Biblical Text ◽  
World Views ◽  
Literal Interpretation ◽  
Origin Of Species ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Universe

Ever since Charles Darwin first published his revolutionary book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, there has been considerable disagreement among Christians concerning both the truth of evolutionary theory and its possible reconciliation with the Bible. Some Christians have taken the so-called ‘fundamentalist creationist’ position believing in a literal interpretation of the first few chapters of Genesis. Others have adopted so-called ‘theistic evolutionist’ views accepting to various different degrees Darwinian ideas about origins. One point however on which most Christians (and indeed non-Christians) are agreed, is that an evolutionary process based on blind chance must necessarily conflict with all possible theistic world views and stands irreconcilable with the biblical text. It is this assertion which in this essay I hope to refute, as based on misunderstanding of the meaning of blind chance, of the mechanism of evolution and of the involvement of God in the universe.

Fleeming Jenkin andThe Origin of Species: a reassessment

1994 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 313-343 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan W. Morris
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Origin Of Species ◽  
Victorian Periodicals

Early in June of 1867, Charles Darwin turned back the cover of his copy of the respected quarterlyNorth British Review, to find on its opening pages a lengthy essay attacking his theory of natural selection. As with the vast majority of articles in the Victorian periodicals, the review was anonymous, prompting immediate speculation in Darwin's circle as to the author's identity. It was to be about a year-and-a-half before Darwin would learn that the engineer Fleeming Jenkin had written the essay. By then, Darwin had concluded that the critique was the most valuable he had ever read onThe Origin of Species.

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.

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