Given the amount of literature devoted to the reasoning used in Darwin’s Origin of Species, an interpretation seeking to revise the standard take on Darwin’s methodology is unexpected. Yet,, and challenges the view that Darwin drew an analogy in the Origin on the grounds that such a strategy could not support the possibility of a new species emerging. I suggest, however, that how one interprets causal efficacy is intimately connected with Darwin’s use of analogy. A more robust conception of natural (...) selection, as found in the Origin, supports the standard interpretation, significantly weakening Richards’ charge of a paradox. (shrink)

What should human languages be like if humans are the products of Darwinian evolution? Between Darwin’s day & like the peoples speaking them are higher or lower in an evolutionarily generated scale This paper charts some of the changes in the Darwinian tradition that transformed the notion of human linguistic equality from creationist heresy., our own, expectations about evolution’s imprint on language have changed dramaticallyIt is now a commonplace that, for good Darwinian reasons, no language is more highly evolved than (...) any otherBut Darwin, in The descent of man, defended the opposite view: different languages. (shrink)