Darwinian Struggles: But is There Progress?

Darwin Charles , On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for existence (London, 1859), Chapter III.

Ruse Michael , Monad to man: The concept of progress in evolutionary biology (Cambridge, MA, 1996).

Ruse Michael , Philosophy after Darwin: Classic and contemporary readings (Princeton, NJ, 2009) includes many of the seminal discussions arguing this issue.

Tax Sol (ed.)., Evolution after Darwin: The evolution of life (Chicago, 1960); idem, Evolution after Darwin: The evolution of man (Chicago, 1960); Tax Sol Callender Charles (eds)., Evolution after Darwin: Issues in evolution (Chicago, 1960).

Dobzhansky Theodosius , Genetics and the origin of species (New York, 1937); Ford Edmund B. , Ecological genetics (London, 1964). The second of these books is a summation of nearly forty years work.

Smocovitis Vassiliki Betty , “The 1959 Darwin centennial celebration in America”, Osiris, xiv (1999), 274–323, is a superb overview of the Chicago gathering and of the underlying intentions.

As implied above, this professionalization demanded the shooing away of aged scientists. Unfortunately, looking for other places to occupy their days, many moved over to my own home discipline of philosophy. As in: “Poor old Jones is no longer up to cutting-edge research. He's entered the philosopause”.

Darwin Charles , The autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809–1882. With the original omissions restored. Edited and with appendix and notes by his grand-daughter Barlow Nora (London, 1958).

Darwin Francis (ed.)., The life and letters of Charles Darwin, including an autobiographical chapter (3 vols, London, 1887).

de Beer Gavin (ed.)., “Darwin's notebooks on transmutation of species”, Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History): Historical series, ii/2 (1960), 25–73; idem, “Darwin's notebooks on transmutation of species. Part II”, Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History): Historical series, ii/3 (1960), 77–117; idem, “Darwin's notebooks on transmutation of species. Part III”, Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History): Historical series, ii/4 (1960), 121–50; idem, “Darwin's notebooks on transmutation of species. Part IV”, Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History): Historical series, ii/5 (1960), 154–83; de Beer Gavin Rowlands M. J. (eds)., “Darwin's notebooks on transmutation of species: Addenda and corrigenda”, Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History): Historical series, ii/6 (1961), 187–200; de Beer Gavin Rowlands M. J. Skramovsky B. M. (eds)., “Darwin's notebooks on transmutation of species. Part VI”, Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History): Historical series, iii/5 (1967), 131–76.

Darwin Charles , The foundations of the origin of species: Two essays written in 1842 and 1844, ed. by Darwin Francis (Cambridge, 1909); Darwin Charles Wallace Alfred Russel , Evolution by natural selection, ed. with a foreword by de Beer Gavin (Cambridge, 1958).

Darwin Charles , The origin of species by Charles Darwin: A variorum text, ed. by Peckham Morse (Philadelphia, PA, 1959).

Darwin Charles , Facsimile edition of ‘On the Origin of Species’, ed. with an introduction by Mayr Ernst (Cambridge, MA, 1959).

de Beer Gavin , Charles Darwin: Evolution by natural selection (London, 1961).

Himmelfarb Gertrude , Darwin and the Darwinian revolution (New York, 1959).

Greene John , The death of Adam: Evolution and its impact on Western thought (Ames, IO, 1959).

Ellegård Alvar , Darwin and the general reader (Goteborg, 1958).

Cannon Susan Faye , Science in culture: The early Victorian period (New York, 1978).

Herbert Sandra , “Darwin, Malthus, and selection”, Journal of the history of biology, iv (1971), 209–17; Limoges Camille , La sélection naturelle (Paris, 1970).

Vorzimmer Peter , Charles Darwin: The years of controversy (Philadelphia, PA, 1970).

Ghiselin Michael , The triumph of the Darwinian method (Berkeley, 1969).

Ruse Michael , “Darwin's debt to philosophy: An examination of the influence of the philosophical ideas of John F. W. Herschel and William Whewell on the development of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution”, Studies in history and philosophy of science, vi (1975), 159–81.

Young Robert , Darwin's metaphor: Nature's place in Victorian culture (Cambridge, 1985).

Coleman William , Georges Cuvier zoologist: A study in the history of evolution theory (Cambridge, 1964).

Burkhardt Richard , The spirit of system: Lamarck and evolutionary biology (Cambridge, MA, 1977).

Wilson Leonard G. (ed.)., Sir Charles Lyell's scientific journals on the species question (New Haven, 1970); idem, Charles Lyell, the years to 1841: The revolution in geology (New Haven, 1972).

Rudwick Martin , “The strategy of Lyell's Principles of Geology”, Isis, lxi (1969), 5–33; idem, The meaning of fossils (New York, 1972); idem, “Darwin and Glen Roy: A ‘great failure’ in scientific method?”, Studies in the history and philosophy of science, v (1974), 1974–185.

Ruse Michael , The Darwinian Revolution: Science red in tooth and claw (Chicago, 1979; 2nd edn with new afterword, 1999). A nice story about the subtitle: David Hull, my long-time friend and fellow historian and philosopher of evolutionary biology, was one of the referees for the Press and, as I discovered, it was he who suggested the subtitle to jazz things up a little. A year or two later, we were both in conversation with Ernst Mayr, who turned to me and said: “I really liked your book, Mike, but what a silly subtitle.” At which point, David — The whited sepulchre that he is — Nodded and murmured: “Yes Mike, you did yourself no favors there.” For the record: I love the subtitle.

Kuhn Thomas , Structure of scientific revolutions (Chicago, 1962).

Darwin Charles , Charles Darwin's Natural Selection; being the second part of his big species book written from 1856 to 1858, ed. by Stauffer Robert C. (Cambridge, 1975).

Barrett Paul H. Gautrey Peter J. Herbert Sandra Kohn David Smith Sydney (eds), Charles Darwin's notebooks, 1836–1844 (Ithaca, NY, 1987).

Darwin Charles , The correspondence of Charles Darwin (Cambridge, 1985–).

Sulloway Frank , “Darwin and his finches: The evolution of a legend”, Journal of the history of biology, xv (1982), 1–53.

See for instance, Moore James , “Of love and death: Why Darwin ‘gave up Christianity’”, in Moore James (ed.), History, humanity and evolution: Essays for John C. Greene (Cambridge, 1989), 195–229.

http://roughguidetoevolution.blogspot.com/.

Herbert Sandra , Charles Darwin, geologist (Ithaca, NY, 2005).

Browne Janet , Charles Darwin: Voyaging. Volume I of a biography (New York, 1995); idem, Charles Darwin: The power of place. Volume II of a biography (New York, 2002).

Jonathan M. Hodge S. Radick Gregory (eds)., The Cambridge companion to Darwin, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 2009); Ruse Michael Richards Robert J. (eds)., The Cambridge companion to the “Origin of Species” (Cambridge, 2009).

Sedley David , Creationism and its critics in Antiquity (Berkeley, 2008).

See for instance Mayr Ernst , The growth of biological thought: Diversity, evolution and inheritance (Cambridge, MA, 1982). It has always been a mystery to me that Mayr, a genuinely cultured man with a good German classical education, should have been so hostile to Plato.

Richards Robert J. , The romantic conception of life: Science and philosophy in the age of Goethe (Chicago, 2003).

Richards Robert J. , Darwin and the emergence of evolutionary theories of mind and behavior (Chicago, 1987).

Secord James A. , Victorian sensation (Chicago, 2000).

A partial list of Peter J. Bowler's writings includes: Fossils and progress (New York, 1976); The eclipse of Darwinism: Anti-Darwinism evolution theories in the decades around 1900 (Baltimore, 1983); Evolution: The history of an idea (Berkeley, 1984); Theories of human evolution (Baltimore, 1986); The non-Darwinian revolution: Reinterpreting a historical myth (Baltimore, 1988); The Mendelian revolution: The emergence of hereditarian concepts in modern science and society (London, 1989); Charles Darwin: The man and his influence (Oxford, 1990; reissue Cambridge, 1996); The invention of progress: The Victorians and the past (Oxford, 1990); Life's splendid drama (Chicago, 1996); Reconciling science and religion: The debate in early-twentieth-century Britain (Chicago, 2001); and Monkey trials and gorilla sermons: Evolution and Christianity from Darwin to intelligent design (Cambridge, MA, 2009).

Provine William , The origins of theoretical population genetics (Chicago, 1971); idem, Sewall Wright and evolutionary biology (Chicago, 1986).

Mayr Ernst Provine William (eds)., The evolutionary synthesis: Perspectives on the unification of biology (Cambridge, MA, 1980).

Smocovitis Vassiliki Betty , Unifying biology: The evolutionary synthesis and evolutionary biology (Princeton, NJ, 1996); Cain Joseph A. , “Common problems and cooperative solutions: Organizational activity in evolutionary studies 1936–1947”, Isis, lxxxiv (1993), 1993–25; Cain Joseph A. Ruse Michael (eds)., Descended from Darwin: Insights into the history of evolutionary studies, 1900–1970 (Philadelphia, 2009).

Sepkoski David Ruse Michael (eds)., The paleobiological revolution: Essays on the growth of modern paleontology (Chicago, 2009).

Desmond Adrian , The politics of evolution: Morphology, medicine and reform in radical London (Chicago, 1989); see also Desmond Adrian , Archetypes and ancestors: Palaeontology in Victorian Britain, 1850–1875 (London, 1982).

Desmond Adrian , Huxley, the devil's disciple (London, 1994); idem, Huxley, evolution's high priest (London, 1997).

Moore James R. , The post-Darwinian controversies: A study of the Protestant struggle to come to terms with Darwin in Great Britain and America, 1870–1900 (Cambridge, 1979).

Ruse Michael (ed.)., But is it science? The philosophical question in the creation/evolution controversy (Buffalo, NY, 1988).

Desmond Adrian Moore James , Darwin: The life of a tormented evolutionist (New York, 1992).

Desmond Adrian Moore James , Darwin's sacred cause: How a hatred of slavery shaped Darwin's views on human evolution (New York, 2009).

Hilton Boyd , A mad, bad and dangerous people? England 1783–1846 (Oxford, 2006).

Hoppen K. Theodore , The mid-Victorian generation, 1846–1886 (Oxford, 1998).

Ruse Michael , Darwin and design: Does evolution have a purpose? (Cambridge, MA, 2003); idem, The evolution—creation struggle (Cambridge, MA, 2005); idem, Charles Darwin (Oxford, 2008).

Letters 2269 (6 May 1858) and 2306 (13 July 1858). These can be viewed online, thanks to the Darwin Correspondence Project, at http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/darwin/search/advanced?query=nigger&documenttype=all&submit=Go#.

Darwin , op. cit. (ref. 1). The discussion of slave-making instincts is found in Chapter VII, “Instinct”, 219–24. The phrase “so wonderful an instinct” occurs on p. 219.

Darwin Charles , The descent of man and selection in relation to sex (London, 1871). The Wallace story is told in many places, including by me in Charles Darwin (ref. 57).

Livingstone David N. , Adam's ancestors: Race, religion, and the politics of human origins (Baltimore, 2008).

Ruse Michael , Mystery of mysteries: Is evolution a social construction? (Cambridge, MA, 1999).

Hodge Jonathan , “Against ‘Revolution’ and ‘Evolution’”, Journal of the history of biology, xxxviii (2005), 101–24.

Kuhn , op. cit. (ref. 29).

Ruse Michael , “The Darwinian Revolution as seen in 1979 and as seen twenty-five years later in 2004”, Journal of the history of biology, xxxviii (2005), 3–17; idem, op. cit. (ref. 57, 2008).

Ruse , op. cit. (ref. 3).

Ruse Michael , Darwinism defended: A guide to the evolution controversies (Reading, MA, 1982).

Millhauser Milton , Just before Darwin: Robert Chambers and ‘Vestiges’ (Middletown, CN, 1959), and Gruber Jacob W. , A conscience in conflict: The life of St. George Jackson Mivart (Philadelphia, 1960), respectively.

Dupree A. Hunter , Asa Gray 1810–1888 (Cambridge, MA, 1959), and Lurie Edward , Louis Agassiz: A life in science (Chicago, 1960).

Nagel Ernst , The structure of science: Problems in the logic of scientific explanation (New York, 1961); Hempel Carl G. , Philosophy of natural science (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1966); Popper Karl R. , The logic of scientific discovery (London, 1959); Kuhn , op. cit. (ref. 29).

See Richards , op. cit. (ref. 41), and Appel Toby , The Cuvier—Geoffroy debate: French biology in the decades before Darwin (New York, 1987), for Germany and France respectively.

Darwin , op. cit. (ref. 1), 206.

Owen Richard , On the nature of limbs (London, 1849); Huxley Thomas Henry , “On the theory of the vertebrate skull. Croonian Lecture delivered before the Royal Society, June 17, 1858”, Proceedings of the Royal Society, ix (1857–59), 381–457, reprinted in The scientific memoirs of Thomas Henry Huxley, ed. by Foster Michael Lankester E. Ray (London, 1903), i, 538–606.

Huxley , Ibid., 585.

Richards Robert J. , The tragic sense of life: Ernst Haeckel and the struggle over evolutionary thought (Chicago, 2008).

Richards , op. cit. (ref. 41); Richards Robert J. , “Michael Ruse's design for living”, Journal of the history of biology, xxxvii (2004), 25–38.

Darwin , op. cit. (ref. 1), 489–90.

Haeckel Ernst , Generelle Morphologie der Organismen (Berlin, 1866).

Letter from Karl Marx to Friedrich Engels, 18 June 1862.

Gillespie Charles C. , Genesis and geology (Cambridge, MA, 1950).

Ruse Michael , “Darwin and mechanism: Metaphor in science”, Studies in history and philosophy of biology and biomedical sciences, xxxvi (2005), 285–302.

Darwin Charles Wallace Alfred Russel , Evolution by natural selection, foreword by Gavin de Beer (Cambridge, 1958), 87.

Brewster David , “Review of Comte's ‘Cours de Philosophie Positive’”, Edinburgh review, lxvii (1838), 271–308, p. 301.

Ruse , op. cit. (ref. 28); Ospovat Dov , The development of Darwin's theory: Natural history, natural theology, and natural selection, 1838–1859 (Cambridge, 1981).

Gould Stephen J. , Full house: The spread of excellence from Plato to Darwin (New York, 1996).

Dawkins Richard , The blind watchmaker (New York, 1986).

Darwin Charles , The origin of species by Charles Darwin: A variorum text, ed. by Peckham Morse (Philadelphia, PA, 1959), 222. This is from the third edition (1861) of the Origin.

Ruse Michael , “Charles Darwin and group selection”, Annals of science, xxxvii (1980), 615–30.

Darwin , op. cit. (ref. 1), 63–64.

Darwin , op. cit. (ref. 60).

Bowler , op. cit. (ref. 44, 1988).

Bowler , op. cit. (ref. 44, 1988), 4.

Ruse , op. cit. (ref. 2).

Bates Henry Walter , “Contributions to an insect fauna of the Amazon valley”, Transactions of the Linnaean Society of London, xxiii (1862), 495–515; Raphael W. Weldon F. , “Presidential address to the zoological section of the British Association”, Transactions of the British Association (Bristol, 1898), 887–902.

Morgan Thomas Hunt Sturtevant Alfred Muller Hermann J. Bridges Calvin , The mechanisms of Mendelian heredity (New York, 1915); Allen Garland , Thomas Hunt Morgan: The man and his science (Princeton, NJ, 1978).

Gould Stephen Jay , Wonderful life: The Burgess Shale and the nature of history (New York, 1989).

Numbers Ronald L. , The creationists: The evolution of scientific creationism (New York, 1992); 2nd edn, The creationists: From scientific creationism to intelligent design (Cambridge, MA, 2006); Larson Edward J. , Summer for the gods: The Scopes trial and America's continuing debate over science and religion (New York, 1997); Roberts Jon H. , Darwinism and the divine in America: Protestant intellectuals and organic evolution, 1859–1900 (Madison, WI, 1988); Moore , op. cit. (ref. 51); Bowler , op. cit. (ref. 44, 2001); Bowler , op. cit. (ref. 44, 2009); Livingstone David , Darwin's forgotten defenders: The encounter between evangelical theology and evolutionary thought (Grand Rapids, 1987); Livingstone , op. cit. (ref. 61); Forrest Barbara Gross Paul R. , Creationism's Trojan Horse: The wedge of intelligent design (Oxford, 2004).

Ruse , op. cit. (ref. 57, 2003); idem, op. cit. (ref. 57, 2005).

Ruse Michael , Can a Darwinian be a Christian? The relationship between science and religion (Cambridge, 2001); idem, Science and spirituality: Making room for faith in the age of science (Cambridge, in press).

Pennock Robert Ruse Michael (eds), But is it science? The philosophical question in the creation/evolution controversy, 2nd edn (Buffalo, NY, 2008); Dembski William A. Ruse Michael (eds), Debating design: Darwin to DNA (Cambridge, 2004).

Dawkins Richard , The God delusion (New York, 2007).