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Scientists and thologians had long been debating the religious implicaitons of evolutionary theory when Darwin announced his theory of natural selection.
Jean Octave Edmond Perrier was a French zoologist who lived through the tumult of British Darwinism and Lyellism, and reminds us in this revealing account that French scientists had much to contribute to such perennial topics as evolution, catastrophism and creationism. While very much a product of the Third Republic, Perrier’s account also aimed to outline timeless issues and permanent advances in taxonomic and developmental biology since classical Greece and Rome. In this aim he succeeds with surprisingly modern perspectives for a book first published in 1884. Perrier was born May 9, 1844 at Tulle, the son of the principal of a school which now bears his name, Lycée Edmond Perrier. In 1864 he was accepted to the École Normale Supérieure, where he was strongly influenced by Louis Pasteur and Henri de Lacaze-Duthiers. After working for three years at a high school in Agen, he obtained a post of naturalist-aid at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle (1868), advancing in that institution to Chair of Natural History of Molluscs, Worms and Corals (1876–1903) and then Director of the museum (1900–1919) and Chair of Comparative Anatomy (1903–1921). Previous directors of the museum included many of the scientists he discusses in this book: George Cuvier (1822–1823, 1826–1827, 1830–1831), Isidore Geoffrey St Hilaire (1860– 1861), and Alphonse Milne-Edwards (1891–1900). Perrier’s own research on echinoderms and earthworms took him on several expeditions in 1880-1885, mostly to Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts, but also to the Caribbean.
A complete account of evolutionary thought in the social, environmental and policy sciences, creating bridges with biology.
It was long believed that evolutionary theories received an almost universally cold reception in British natural history circles in the first half of the nineteenth century. However, a relatively recently serious doubt has been cast on this assumption. This book shows that Edinburgh in the late 1820s and early 1830s was witness to a ferment of radical new ideas on the natural world, including speculation on the origin and evolution of life, at just the time when Charles Darwin was a student in the city. Those who were students in Edinburgh at the time could have hardly avoided coming into contact with these new ideas. This book is the first major study of what was probably the most important centre or pre-Darwinian evolutionary thought in the British Isles. It sheds new light on the genesis and development of one of the most important scientific theories in the history of western thought.
Opposition to evolution is broad and deep-seated. Interestingly, many of the arguments flatly contradict one another. In this reference work, more than 1,850 books, pamphlets, and tracts are given lengthy, nonpolemical annotations summarizing content and identifying doctrines or theories. Notes on format, the background of the author, and the context of the publication are included.
The Arthur M. Sackler Colloquia of the National Academy of Sciences address scientific topics of broad and current interest, cutting across the boundaries of traditional disciplines. Each year, four or five such colloquia are scheduled, typically two days in length and international in scope. Colloquia are organized by a member of the Academy, often with the assistance of an organizing committee, and feature presentations by leading scientists in the field and discussions with a hundred or more researchers with an interest in the topic. Colloquia presentations are recorded and posted on the National Academy of Sciences Sackler colloquia website and published on CD-ROM. These Colloquia are made possible by a generous gift from Mrs. Jill Sackler, in memory of her husband, Arthur M. Sackler.
This major contribution to the intellectual history of Cambridge University takes as its main theme the rise of a specific educational ideal in early Victorian Cambridge.
This is the first of a pair of volumes by Jonathan Hodge, collecting all his most innovative, revisionist and influential papers on Charles Darwin and on the longer run of theories about origins and species from ancient times to the present. The focus in this volume is on the diversity of theories among such pre-Darwinian authors as Lamarck and Whewell, and on developments in the theory of natural selection since Darwin. Plato's Timaeus, the Biblical Genesis and any current textbook of evolutionary biology are all, it may well seem, on this same enduring topic: origins and species. However, even among classical authors, there were fundamental disagreements: the ontology and cosmogony of the Greek atomists were deeply opposed to Plato's; and, in the millennia since, the ontological and cosmogonical contexts for theories about origins and species have never settled into any unifying consensus. While the structure of Darwinian theory may be today broadly what it was in Darwin's own argumentation, controversy continues over the old issues about order, chance, necessity and purpose in the living world and the wider universe as a whole. The historical and philosophical papers collected in this volume, and in the companion volume devoted to Darwin's theorising, seek to clarify the major continuities and discontinuities in the long run of thinking about origins and species.
'Robert Chambers's Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation was the most important pre-Darwinian work of evolutionary thought published in Victorian Britain. It caused huge controversy and was undoubtedly a major factor in preparing the way, both positively and negatively, for On the Origin of Species. To this point, essential documents surrounding the work - the reviews, the commentaries, the expositions, and more - have been incredibly difficult to obtain and truly available only to the most privileged scholar. Now with the publication of the Thoemmes Press collection on Vestiges, essential material will be readily available to all. The editor, John M. Lynch, and the Press are to be congratulated and thanked for making this possible.' - Michael Ruse Vestiges and the Debate Before Darwin centres on Robert Chambers's Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation and reprints all the key documents in the controversy that surrounded its publication. Vestiges was first published in 1844. Chambers, one of the most successful publishers in Britain, managed to keep his authorship a secret throughout the ten editions published in his lifetime. The work reached a huge popular audience and was widely read by the social and intellectual elite. Despite initially favourable reviews, its publication sent shockwaves through the world of British science. Chambers suggested that the whole of nature, including mankind, could be explained by the action of a single universal evolutionary law--a law that suggested that not only did change happen in the past, but that it would continue into the future. Such a statement enflamed both religious conservatives (Sedgwick referred to the 'inner deformity and foulness' of the work and its 'gross and filthy views of physiology') and scientists (T. H. Huxley said that the author was 'one of those who--indulge in science at second-hand and dispense totally with logic', and physicist Sir David Brewster warned that Vestiges 'stood a fair chance of poisoning the fountains of religion'). Understanding the upheaval that Vestiges caused in 'polite' British society is key to understanding Darwin's later argument and the reaction to his work by the same public. Reprinted here is the rare tenth edition of Vestiges (1853), written in response to this widespread criticism, plus Chambers's 'sequel', Explanations, written largely as a reply to Sedgwick's highly critical review of Vestiges. Periodical reviews and other important book-length refutations are also incorporated, including rare editions of works by Adam Sedgwick, William Whewell and Hugh Miller. With introductory essays by John M. Lynch of Arizona State University's Institute of Human Origins, this important set will appeal to both historians of evolutionary thought and philosophers of science alike. -collection of rare primary sources on the evolution debate before Darwin -selects the best editions, added to which are extensive introductory essays -gathers numerous critical reviews tracing the debate over ten years -intriguing case study of Victorian scientific controversy
Everybody knows—or thinks they know—Charles Darwin, the father of evolution and the man who altered the way we view our place in the world. But what most people do not know is that Darwin was on board the HMS Beagle as a geologist—on a mission to examine the land, not flora and fauna.Tracing Darwin’s footsteps in South America and beyond, geologist Rob Wesson sets out on a trek across the Andes, repeating the nautical surveys made by the Beagle’s crew, hunting for fossils in Uruguay and Argentina, and explores traces of long vanished glaciers in Scotland and Wales. By following Darwin’s path literally and intellectually, Rob experiences the landscape that absorbed Darwin, followed his reasoning about what he saw, and immerses himself in the same questions about the earth. Upon Darwin’s return from the five-year journey, he conceived his theory of tectonics—his first theory. These concepts and attitudes—the vastness of time; the enormous cumulative impact of almost imperceptibly slow change; change as a constant feature of the environment—underlie his subsequent discoveries in evolution. And this peculiar way of thinking remains vitally important today as we enter the Anthropocene.