Imagining the Darwinian Revolution: Historical Narratives of Evolution from the Nineteenth Century to the Present

Description

This volume considers the relationship between the development of evolution and its historical representations by focusing on the so-called Darwinian Revolution. The very idea of the Darwinian Revolution is a historical construct devised to help explain the changing scientific and cultural landscape that was ushered in by Charles Darwin’s singular contribution to natural science. And yet, since at least the 1980s, science historians have moved away from traditional “great man” narratives to focus on the collective role that previously neglected figures have played in formative debates of evolutionary theory. Darwin, they argue, was not the driving force behind the popularization of evolution in the nineteenth century. This volume moves the conversation forward by bringing Darwin back into the frame, recognizing that while he was not the only important evolutionist, his name and image came to signify evolution itself, both in the popular imagination as well as in the work and writings of other evolutionists. Together, contributors explore how the history of evolution has been interpreted, deployed, and exploited to fashion the science behind our changing understandings of evolution from the nineteenth century to the present. Contents Acknowledgments Introduction | Ian Hesketh Part I: Origin Stories One. Imagining the Darwinian Revolution in the Nineteenth Century | Ian Hesketh Two. The “Greatest Living Philosopher” and the Useful Biologist: How Spencer and Darwin Viewed Each Other’s Contributions to Evolutionary Theory | Bernard Lightman Three. The Darwinism of the X Club | Ruth Barton Four. “A Monkey into a Man”: Thomas Henry Huxley, Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, and the Making of an Evolutionary Icon | Gowan Dawson Part II: The Politics of Darwinism Five. The Politics of the Darwinian Revolution | Piers J. Hale Six. “This Great Principle of the Continuity of Phenomena”: Edward Aveling on the Evolutionism of Darwin and Marx | Joel Barnes Seven. Darwinism and Historiography: What Is Excluded? | Sarah A. Qidwai Eight. Darwinism and Neo-Darwinism in Recent Colloquial Science | Jamie Freestone Part III: Evolution's Imagined Pasts Nine. Darwin of the Mind: Freud’s Darwinian Image | Henry-James Meiring Ten. R. A. Fisher and the Scientific Past: From the History of the Darwinian Revolution to a Darwinian Revolution in History | Alex Aylward Eleven. Indirect Descent: Darwin’s Legacy in Twentieth-Century Paleoanthropology | Emily Kern Twelve. French Naturalists versus Darwinian Specialists: Albert Vandel and Pierre-Paul Grassé’s “True” Synthesis | Emily Herring Thirteen. The Rise of Darwinian Literalism | Erika Lorraine Milam Coda | Ian Hesketh Notes Selected Bibliography Contributors Index