Abstract

This collection of thirteen essays by prominent scholars explores the history of evolutionary thought in all of its cultural richness over the past two hundred years. Evolutionary ideas have undergone fundamental changes and are now found to have diverse sources and universal scope. They are no longer beholden to biologists’ understanding of their own past, and do not focus exclusively on Charles Darwin. This volume aims to address the problem of the human significance of evolution. The contributors draw on contemporary sources as diverse as medicine, literature and natural history tableaux, as well as the resources of publishing history, feminine scholarship, and the histories of politics, sociology, and philosophy. The essays offer new perspectives on familiar figures such as Erasmus, Charles Darwin, Lamarck, Chambers, Huxley, and Haeckel, but also on many lesser known participants in the evolutionary debates. Contents Preface; Introductory conversation; 1. Erasmus Darwin: Doctor of Evolution? R. Porter; 2. Nature’s powers: a reading of Lamarck’s distinction between creation and production L. Jordanova; 3. Lamarckism and democracy: corporations, corruption, and comparative anatomy in the 1830s A. Desmond; 4. The nebular hypothesis and the science of progress S. Schaffer; 5. Behind the veil: Robert Chambers and Vestiges J. A. Secord; 6. Of love and death: why Darwin ’gave up Christianity’ J. R. Moore; 7. Encounters with Adam, or at least the Hyaenas: nineteenth-century visual representation of the deep past M. Rudwick; 8. Huxley and woman’s place in science: the ’woman question’ and the control of Victorian anthropology E. Richards; 9. Ideology, evolution, and late-Victorian agnostic popularizers B. Lightman; 10. Ernst Haeckel, Darwinismus, and the secularization of nature P. Weindling; 11. Holding your head up high: degeneration and orthogenesis in theories of human evolution P. J. Bowler; 12. Evolution, ideology, and world view: Darwinian religion in the twentieth century J. R. Durant; 13. Persons, organisms, and łdots primary qualities R. M. Young; Afterword John C. Greene; Index.