Abstract

The philosophers who first confronted Darwin’s revolutionary ideas actively explored their philosophical implications. Darwin himself led off, in particular, by claiming that humans’ mental abilities evolved and that they have adaptive survival value for us. From Marx to Spencer, Bergson, William James, and on to John Dewey, diverse thinkers responded, pro and con. One might expect that this ferment would lead, among other things, to new insights in the fields of perception and of mind. Surely Darwin’s ideas would become as important to twentieth-century philosophy as they are to modern biology. Yet Suzanne Cunningham’s point in this book is that, historically, the influence of Darwin is lacking, particularly in analytical and phenomenological thinkers.