scholarly journals One Long Argument: Charles Darwin and the Genesis of Modern Evolutionary Thought

1994 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-114
Author(s):  
Charles Mitter
Keyword(s):  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Evolutionary Thought

The Origins of Diversity: Darwin's Conditions and Epigenetic Variations

2007 ◽  
Vol 19 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 103-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
David E. Marsh
Keyword(s):  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Double Helix ◽  
Paradigm Change ◽  
Short History ◽  
Adaptive Mutations ◽  
Evolutionary Thought ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Heritable Change

This short history of evolutionary thought during the last few centuries describes how some of our foremost thinkers have debated – and still do – the precise mechanisms at the roots of evolutionary change. Commentators frequently contradicted themselves, as well as each other. The popularity of Christian fundamentalism waned following the World Wars. Eventually the rug was pulled from beneath it – till a more recent reaction. Amidst all this babble coming from numerous towers of Babel over centuries, we failed to see Charles Darwin as the great environmentalist: who said environmental conditions, whilst working hand in glove with natural selection, constituted the more important 'law.' A bird's eye view of 18th and 19th century evolutionary thought is considered against the climate of those times (politics, industrial revolution, trade, religious expansionism, etc). Darwinism superseded Lamarckism helped by the neo-Darwinism of Weismann, higher mathematics, population genetics – the 'Modern Synthesis' of 1935 – culminating in the discovery of the double helix by Watson, Crick et al, assuring us of the correctness of 'primacy of DNA theory'. Stimulation and challenge is currently fuelled by exciting nascent knowledge of epigenetic variations and Cairnsian 'adaptive mutations'. The work of Marcus Pembrey and Barry Keverne tracking human and animal variation back generationally describing how 'genomic imprinting' causes reversible heritable change from slight variations in the chromosomes of parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and parents to be. The purpose of this thesis is to put forward a new theme proposed neither by Lamarck or Darwin. We stand on the threshold of the first paradigm change for 150 years.

Jemmy Button

1987 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher P. Toumey
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Tierra Del Fuego ◽  
South American ◽  
Evolutionary Thought ◽  
Human Capacity ◽  
Naval Officers

Jemmy Button was an Indian of Tierra del Fuego who inadvertently inspired four generations of nineteenth-century English missionaries to risk their earthly lives to save his eternal soul. These earnest evangelicals made five expeditions to Jemmy's South American homeland to make Christians of him and his countrymen. One of these ventures was an embarrassing fiasco, another ended in death by starvation, and a third led to a treacherous massacre.This young Indian's unintended influence also touched evolutionary thought. Jemmy Button was a friend and companion to Charles Darwin on the famous voyage of H.M.S. Beagle. Jemmy's versatile personality was intriguing to Darwin. He could be a naked Indian hunter when in Tierra del Fuego, and a foppish English gentleman when in the company of British naval officers. His ability to change like this inspired Darwin's earliest written reflections on the human capacity to progress from savagery to civilization.

Wallace, Alfred Russel (1823–1913)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara G. Beddall
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Geographical Distribution ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
South American ◽  
Malay Archipelago ◽  
Evolutionary Thought

Co-discoverer with Charles Darwin of the theory of natural selection, Wallace travelled to the Amazon in 1848. Four years of collecting specimens there for sale in Europe revealed patterns of geographical distribution among animals. Unfortunately, much of his South American collection was lost in a fire at sea during the voyage home, which forced him to begin his collecting anew. This led to eight more years of travel (1854–62), this time in the Malay Archipelago, where he made his own momentous discovery of the theory of natural selection in 1858. An exceptionally clear thinker, he made many valuable contributions to evolutionary thought.

History of Evolutionary Thought before Darwin

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pietro Corsi
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Social Elite ◽  
Evolutionary Thought ◽  
History Of ◽  
Theories Of Evolution ◽  
The Many ◽  
Social Debate

The history of early theories of evolution has suffered from two opposite assumptions. The most popular one insists that Charles Darwin (b. 1809–d. 1882) was an isolated genius working against crowds of creationists. A minority tradition believes that Darwin simply added his voice to a disjointed chorus of precursors spread throughout time and space. The work of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (b. 1744–d. 1829) has been referred to, especially by French and anti-Darwinian commentators past and present, to show how far the British naturalist lacked originality. Some historians have pushed the search further back into the past and traced the beginning of the doctrine of evolution to Greek times, or to Latin authors such as Titus Lucretius Carus (b. c. 99 bc–d. c. 55 bc). Others have called attention to 18th-century France as the intellectual cradle of evolution. Still others have pointed out that the attributions of evolutionary intentions to naturalists of the past is often based on sentences or paragraphs extrapolated from their context; in other words, the sin of anachronism has produced many illegitimate precursors. One feature unites the opposite camps: the past is studied to determine its relevance to present-days concerns. Studied on its own term, the past is much more interesting and fascinating than the obsessive autobiography of the present we are used to. Recent scholarship is exploring the many ways in which, from the mid-18th century to the first half of the 19th, a plurality of commentators—naturalists, anthropologists, travelers, philosophers, even theologians—asked questions concerning the history of life, its geographical distribution, and the extent to which change could and did occur. After the turmoil of the French Revolution, naturalists working within institutions and members of the social elite worried by atheism and subversion opposed all form of speculation concerning life and its history. However, authors addressing the curiosity of the reading public engaged in speculations on the history of the universe, of life, and of mankind. Successful popular encyclopedias, dictionaries of natural history, and journals throughout Europe kept alive a debate that “official” science shunned. To reduce such an intense scientific and social debate to the sole figures of Lamarck and Darwin is to miss the greater part of the story. Reactions to Lamarck and Darwin prove that contemporaries had much to say on their work simply because many had their own views on organic change. Darwin’s On the Origin of Species did not convert contemporaries to evolution; it provided authoritative support for doctrines many had already embraced.

One Long Argument: Charles Darwin and the Genesis of Modern Evolutionary Thought

1992 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 586
Author(s):  
Albert B. Stewart ◽  
Ernst Mayr
Keyword(s):  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Evolutionary Thought
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