Darwinian Evolution

Development of Global Comparative Sciences

1. Foundation in geology and natural history of the late 1700s

• Mapping and comparison of regions, leading to theories of uniform geological forces or actions

• Morphological study of extensive collections of plants and animals, leading to classification by similarities and differences

• Emphasis on the “comparative method”

2. New sciences of systems of broad geographic patterns

• Requiring extensive data collection across scales of geography, and time

• Historical (dynamic) geology

• Biogeography (distribution of species) of regions and “zones"

• Climatology, combining geology, oceanography, meteorology, glaciology, atmospheric chemistry, natural economy (ecology), biogeography

• Evolutionary biology, synthesizing all with the historical dimension

3. Context and supports for sciences at a large scale

• expanded scale of economy

  • such as the East India Company mapping and publishing nautical charts

  • new technologies of travel, communication (telegraph), publishing

• state enterprises to collect, collate, and publish such data

  • naval expeditions of exploration and imperial interests (France and Britain dominant)

  • nautical charts from British Admiralty’s Hydrographer (Dalrymple, 1795, succeeded by Admiral Beaufort, 1829, and the Hydrographic Office)

  • expansion of government bureaucracy, such as

    • intensive and extensive collection of statistical weather data in colonial India

    • meteorological data and weather forecasting (FitzRoy and the Meteorological Department of the Board of Trade, 1854)

    • similar agencies in Vienna, Hamburg (1850s-60s)

    • British global Terrestrial Magnetism survey (1856)

• global networks of collaborators

• new instruments of measurement

• extensive data from multiple disciplines

• popular interest, especially for the tropics

  • publishing of results of Pacific expeditions and popular travel narratives

  • Alexander von Humboldt as an inspiration for naturalists

The development of Charles Darwin's ideas:

1. education (1820s)

   • naturalist tradition of adaptation study (natural wonders) and Economy of Nature

   • culture promoting empirical knowledge and rational explanation

   • natural theology of Design [Paley's Natural Theology (1802)]

   • scientific principles

     • naturalistic explanation

     • Baconian induction (Henslow, Sedgwick)

     • verification of true causes (vera causa) by analogy (Herschel) and by consilience (Whewell)

   • experience with natural history methods and techniques

2. natural history work on the expedition of H.M.S. Beagle (1831-36)

   • geology following Lyell's Principles of Geology (1831)

   • tropical geography and ecology, inspired by Humboldt's Personal Narrative (18215)

   • experience with South American people

   • noticing odd facts of distribution of both fossils and similar species [including Galápagos mockingbirds, finches]

   • problems for static creation:

     • extinction

     • colonization

     • stratigraphic sequences of fossils

     • biogeographic relationships

3. theorizing (1830s)

   • method and causal theory for geology (coral reefs)

   • deduction of the reality of "transmutation" of species (Red Notebook, early 1837)

     • discovery that the Galápagos birds are closely related species of finch

     • biogeographical relationships and common descent

     • parallel comparison in time: extinction and replacement sequences of fossil species

   • search for a natural mechanism that would produce evolution (B Notebook, mid-1837)

     • questions about gradual change and constant adaptation

     • questions about how new species form and the resulting relationships (tree of life)

     • extensive reading and working out of views

     • queries to other naturalists and experts

   • ideas Darwin used to develop his argument for evolution by natural selection (1836-38):

     • historical sensibility of change and progress

     • breeding literature on inheritance of traits

     • dynamics of self-interest ("invisible hand" from Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations [1776]) as a source of order

     • natural economy of place, competition, and balance

     • Malthusian population pressure and the "struggle for existence": mathematical law, order and process

4. argument for evolution (1838-44)

   • genealogy (descent) explains observed relationships:

     • taxonomy

     • biogeography

     • embryology

     • fossil sequence

   • variation is abundant and inherited

   • struggle for nature is inevitable

   • intraspecific competition sharpest

   • thus natural selection of inherited advantage would direct "descent with modification"

   • similarity with Wallace's ideas on gradual geological change and natural cause of new species (1855)

   • Wallace's paper on the ecological tendency to evolve (1858) -- joint publication by Darwin and Wallace in 1858

Rhetoric and argument of On the Origin of Species (1859):

1. promote an image of "good science" of inductive logic and laws of nature

2. The argument:

   • start with known yet ignored facts:

     • variation

     • domestication

     • struggle for existence

   • present the logic of natural selection

   • raise and dispose of the difficulties of the evolutionary theory

   • explain several biological phenomena (old & new) with new theory

   • rework and subvert natural theology with new science

3. not attempt to answer the origin of life, the origin of humans, or draw the evolutionary tree of all life

Reception of Darwin's theory in the 1860s:

1. Supporting scientific arguments:

   • logic and philosophical principles of science (Mill, Whewell)

   • structure and style of argument (Gray, Carpenter, Hooker)

   • marshalling of consistent evidence (Bates, Wallace, Huxley, Lyell)

   • consilient synthesis of biological explanations (Müller, Wallace, Huxley)

   • expanding realm of scientific explanation ("Darwinian" research program) of observed patterns

     • paleontology

     • comparative anatomy and constructing phylogeny (evolutionary tree)

     • laws of heredity

     • laws of embryology (development and growth)

     • development of new subdisciplines of biology: cell biology, embryology, heredity

2. Opposing scientific objections:

   • satisfaction with idealism (Agassiz)

   • logic and methodology of empiricism (Sedgwick, Owen)

   • reliance on chance and randomness (Herschel's "law of higgeldy-piggeldy")

   • insufficient age of earth (Lord Kelvin's argument from physics of heat)

   • unknown mechanism of heredity (Jenkin, Mivart)

   • gradualist operation of natural selection (Jenkin, Mivart)

3. Broader supports and objections to Darwinism:

   • popularity of natural explanations and positive views of science

   • culture of progressivism

   • support from skeptics and critics of religion

   • ties to radical politics

   • rejection of materialist implications for human nature and soul

   • theology of Creationism

   • desire to retain Purpose and Design in nature

Evolutionism as a new interpretation of the world: Laws of Progress

1. replacement of Design with natural process

2. progressive analogue for human society

   • universal historicism of languages, races, culture, politics, morals

   • social evolutionism: competition and survival of the fittest (Spencer)

   • biological determinism: social traits and heredity (genetics and eugenics)

3. non-Darwinian (directed) theories, 1860-1900

   • Haeckel's recapitulation theory

   • Cope's neo-Lamarckism

   • Eimer's developmental orthogenesis

© 2021 Dr. William Kimler